Girl on a Wire (10 page)

“Remy . . .” I wanted to tread carefully. “This
is
sounding a little crazy. What are we talking about here?”

His face hardened, the stubble adding to the effect.

“You admitted you were in trouble up there,” he said. “Is there a logical explanation?”

Sure. I could explain it lots of ways. The wind, the height, my nerves. But what Remy was talking about, well, the only word for it was magic. I couldn’t make myself believe that was the answer.

“If someone is out to get my family, they wouldn’t need magic to kill us. We’re in a dangerous line of business.”

Remy said, “There’s something else.” There was an envelope pinned to the bottom of the corkboard, and he unfastened it. He handed me the letter inside, handwritten on fancy paper and addressed to Roman Garcia. I read it, shaking my head.

I’m starting a new circus and I hear the most fascinating stories about the Amazing Maronis and what they are capable of, why they were cast out of the community. I’m told you are the one who can tell me the truth of things. Please contact me at your earliest convenience with any guidance you can share that will help me bring them back into the fold. The circus needs all its old magic back. Don’t you agree?

It was signed Thurston Meyer. The date at the top was from last year.

“From Thurston to my grandfather,” said Remy.

“He never comes right out and asks if Nan is magic . . .”

“But I bet he did when they talked.”

My hand trembled. Remy noticed and lifted the sheet away, folded it carefully, and gave me a moment to collect myself.

“Remember at that first party, I had a rose after the lights came back on?” I asked.

“The rose you asked me about on the bridge?” He looked chagrined. “Like I said, I had nothing to do with it. But . . . I am sorry for coming on like such a jerk that night.”

“Well, you’re gifted at it for someone who doesn’t want to be a Romeo.” I paused, deciding how much to tell him. I might as well say it all. “Anyway. I wore it the next day to rehearse, and I fell. I hadn’t fallen since I was four years old. When I got home, Nan saw the rose and freaked. She unwrapped this gross strand of hair from around the stem. Claimed it was an elephant hair.”

I hesitated.

“What?” he asked.

“She said someone had left it to rattle her, and that
it
made me fall. Then she burned it. I caught her.”

“Do you think the stories about her are true?”

He said it softly. Like he didn’t want to ask.

“No.” I wouldn’t believe that. I couldn’t. “There must be some other explanation. When she burned it, she told me she was making sure that it couldn’t
hurt anyone. I don’t know what happened in the past, but I know somebody wants revenge. I can’t let anything happen that could ruin my family’s future. I’ve worked—we’ve
all
worked—too hard to get here.”

“I understand.” Remy reached out to touch his grandfather’s photo. “Before he died, he started talking constantly about how he’d lost his luck, how it was stolen from him, a long time ago. How he’d lost our family’s place on top.”

“But your family is on top. Always has been.” It was the Maronis who’d shuffled off into the shadows. It was me fighting to get us back in the spotlight. It was Nan who’d suffered.

“It’s not been as easy as it looks from the outside.”

Before I could say anything else, he went on. “We were raised to think the Maronis were awful. And, like I said, my mom has been extremely weird since you guys arrived. Wanting to know where we’re going, what we’re doing. Climbing up on that bridge—I might as well have asked for them to watch my every move. That’s why I gave you the note.”

“Similar story here.” Though, in my case, Sam was charged with the watching. “Remy, is it possible—just possible, I’m not saying I think this—that someone in your family planted these things on me? I know you said it couldn’t be your mother. But . . . could anyone have had access to these . . . bad luck objects?”

“I’ve looked everywhere, and found nothing. I don’t think so. I hope not.”

“But then where does that leave us—Thurston?” I asked.

“I don’t know, but we need to find out. You could have died on the bridge.”

I swallowed. “We could always die.”

There was no way to dispute it. “There’s one other thing I have for you.” He took my arm, and even though his grip on my forearm was light, I felt his touch as acutely as a burn. He tugged me along behind him, up the hall toward the kitchen. He stopped at the low dining table attached to the wall, plush chairs dotting its edges.

His hand left my arm and he pulled out another drawer, this one on the side of the table. I saw a jumble of candles, matches, and place mats.

“This isn’t going to be another murder board, is it?” I asked.

But I recognized what he removed from this drawer immediately. The painted faces were as familiar as my childhood. Nan’s deck of cards. I hadn’t seen them since we arrived in Sarasota.

Remy laid them on the table. “The night you got here, after the fight, I brought Novio back home, and my mom was sitting at this table with those in front of her. She shoved them in that drawer and hasn’t touched them since, from what I can tell. Everyone knows your grandmother used to give readings for people from her one-of-a-kind hand-painted circus tarot cards. Even me. This is hers, isn’t it?”

I stared. Did that mean someone in the Garcia family
was
behind the break-in? But that wasn’t possible. They were all accounted for. Nan had visited Maria Garcia and her husband that night, and Remy, Dita, and Novio had been at the party. And Nan hadn’t said a word about the cards being missing . . .

“Yes. They’re hers,” I said.

He frowned. “Does she know they’re here?”

“I don’t know.”

The front door banged open, only steps away, and I almost jumped out of my skin. Over his shoulder, Remy said, “Dita, give us one more minute.”

She was breathing hard. “That’s all you’ve got. Everyone else is on their way back.”

But she left us, back out into the night chill and grass to wait. I jerked my head back toward his room. “Does she know about . . . ?”

“You’re the only one besides me who does. I told her you were in love with me.”

“You what?”

“It was the most believable story I could come up with on short notice.” The corner of his mouth lifted. “There’s no time to be mad about it.”

“There’s a little time,” I grumbled.

He picked up the deck of cards and pressed them into my hand. “Take these. See how your grandmother reacts to them.”

“She’s not guilty of anything,” I said, automatically defensive. “I don’t want to upset her.”

“Jules . . . it’s a good first step. Just see how she reacts.”

I took them. “Fine. I’ll give it a shot. How will we talk?”

“Thirty seconds. Hurry,” Dita called from outside.

“I can text you. What’s your number?” he asked.

“I don’t have a phone.” I was against them on the grounds that text speak was inelegant. Plus, I’d never needed one.

He lifted his eyebrows, but said, “The school trailer, then. I get there a little early for afternoon classes. Say you need to use the computer. And be careful.”

“You too.”

“I’m not the one being sabotaged.” He lifted his hand, trailed his fingers along my arm. “Take care.”

He was already dashing back to his room to conceal the board. I banged down the stairs and out into the night with a heavy sigh.

Dita raised her eyebrows. The sleeves of her shirt were rolled to her elbows, and she raised an arm in good-bye. “See you around, Jules.”

“You will.”

“Oh, and tell Sam hi.”

She was inside before I could ask why she wanted me to do that.

I had believed Remy’s answers would make things clearer, but they were only getting more complicated. Now I officially had suspects, plural. Not to mention a suspicion that something was happening between the two of us—and that I wanted it to.

twelve

I couldn’t put off showing the tarot cards to Nan forever, but I’d decided to try another tactic first. One that took me an extra day to arrange, given our travel to the next stop in Raleigh and, once we arrived, my walk between two buildings that were a mere few stories tall. What that added up to was two nights of restless sleep after Remy’s murder board revelations.

And when the morning of truth came, I wasn’t sleeping, but waiting for Nan to wake up. As soon as I heard her stirring in the RV kitchen, I bounded out of bed.

I walked in to find Nan, with her red dressing gown wrapped around her, sitting at the table, her hand resting on a white coffee mug. She claimed her morning caffeine was the “threshold between being asleep and being me.”

Schooling my face into its very best helpful, solicitous, adoring-relative expression, I eased down across from her, leaning my elbow on the table. I hadn’t run my new approach by Remy, because he couldn’t understand what she’d be like with the tarot deck back, and able to make grand pronouncements again. Pronouncements that might be enough to sway Mom or Dad into listening. No, I needed more intel first. And the more I thought about Thurston’s letter to Roman Garcia, the more I was sure it had to come through the billionaire himself.

Nan could help, without realizing what she was doing. I batted my eyes at her.

She gave me a small smile. Wary, but real. “Yes, Jules? Don’t you have your next stunt to rehearse?”

I wasn’t doing a bridge or building walk in every city, and she knew it.

“You’re finished with coffee?” I asked.

“With round two of coffee. This might be a three-round day.”

“But . . . do you have any other plans today?” Before she could answer, I added, “We haven’t been spending enough time together. I know you’re mad at me, but I miss you.”

It was true, and the attention pleased her. I knew it would. In this way, all Maronis are alike.

“We just watched Hildy and Walter the other night, and you’ve been busy. You’re becoming a star. Just like you wanted. And you’ve managed to stay safe. So far.”

She sounded approving, but there was still worry beneath it. I couldn’t put the corkboard out of my mind. I’d had a nightmare about that ring girl, her mouth stuffed full of peacock feathers, smothering her . . . one of my worst dreams ever. The sheets had been soaked when I’d woken up in the middle of the night. I’d lain there trying to picture Roman Garcia, wondering whether he’d spent his life wishing for bad things to happen to us. Someone out there was picturing
me
and wishing for them now.

“Plus,” I said, “you’ve been staying in way too much.”

“Jules,” Nan said, “what are you after?”

“I made us an appointment.”

She drummed her fingers on the table. The perfect red nails on each tip were a relief. “For?”

“It’s a surprise.”

Her lips pursed. She picked up her cup of coffee, took one last swallow, and handed it to me. “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

“I learned from the best. But I think you’ll enjoy this.”

No reason for her not to, depending how our visit to Thurston went. He could be charming, no matter what he was up to, and maybe it would even have the side effect of making her see our presence at the Cirque in a better light. I’d get to watch him with Nan and look for any sign that he believed in the “old magic” he’d mentioned to Roman Garcia in the letter.

Nan sighed. “Get me round three and I will begin the necessary improvements to go out.”

Nan’s preparations took a good hour, but I’d factored that in. She’d already been beautiful sitting at the breakfast table without a speck of makeup on. There was something quietly incognito about her in the mornings, yet her star power was always intact. Seeing her was like spotting Katharine Hepburn dressed down and hiding behind sunglasses. For people like them, it was impossible to pretend not to be exceptional.

But I understood her need to wear armor. She emerged from the back in a calf-length silk dress with a swirling pattern of black and white stripes and black heels. Her lips were Monroe red, as usual.

“Now
I’m
the one who’s underdressed.” I adjusted the maroon bandeau I wore with jeans and a Chinese-style silk jacket I’d liberated from the cast-offs corner in the costumer’s trailer. The dragon on the back was missing a wide swathe of gold detail, but it was still pretty.

“Youth never has to worry about being challenged by the beauty of age.”

“You don’t believe that,” I scoffed. “Plus, it’s not true.”

“You’re right,” she said. It was her turn to bat mascaraed lashes.

My heart seized. This was my Nan. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed her, since we got here. She
hadn’t
been herself.

“I don’t mind being overshadowed once in a while. Not by you, at least,” I said, and stepped aside so she could exit first.

The day was all blue sky and shining sun without too much heat. We ran into Sam outside on the grass, weaving toward the trailer to shower off after his morning routine of mucking the stalls and learning a few tricks of the trade. Mom had begun to teach him some Russian voice commands, after she caught him trying them solo.

“I don’t know what this is about,” he said, taking in Nan, “but I’m all for it. Carry on.”

He mock-saluted and gave me a look that said,
Well done
, and went inside. He and I had talked over our concerns about Nan more than once in the past couple of weeks. I hadn’t told him about Remy and me teaming up yet, but I would when the time was right—when we had enough info that I was sure it wouldn’t result in Sam picking a fight with a Garcia.

“You’re still not going to tell me where we’re going?” she asked.

I looped my elbow through hers and started us across the grounds. “It’s a surprise.”

Heads turned as we passed, and the whispers reminded me there was a reason Nan had been holing up in the RV. I glared at everyone whose reaction was visible.

We stopped at Thurston’s massive personal trailer, or, rather, at the semi-massive trailer
behind
that, which housed his mobile office. The crew jokingly called it Air Force One. Someone had hung a sequin-studded American flag inside one of the long windows, above the Cirque’s painted logo on the outside.

“Here we are,” I said. “I made an appointment with one of your biggest fans.” Before the prospect of us working with the Garcias at the Cirque had come up, Nan had tended to enjoy reminiscing about her glory days. And Thurston had mentioned to me that he would love to get her autograph on his posters of her, when she had time.

“I have a bad feeling about this,” she said.

“Too late to back out.” I knocked.

Thurston’s office door popped open immediately. He beamed at us. “Come in, come in.”

The steps up into the behemoth were wide enough for us both to walk aboard. But when I moved forward, Nan stayed put. She had a hand at her throat.

“Jules . . .”

Nan never started sentences without finishing them. Not for anything other than effect. She was as spooked as one of Mom’s horses during a thunderstorm.

“Nan, don’t be shy.” I reached out and laid a hand on her arm. “Thurston has a collection of old posters, including some of yours. You love this sort of thing. When you were the world’s favorite Maroni.”

Thurston had picked up on the tension. “I wouldn’t want to impose. Jules didn’t think you’d mind, and I am an eager fan . . .”

His pause let me know that he was not happy this was a surprise to her. I didn’t care. He’d sent that letter about us to Roman Garcia. I wanted to know why.

Nan relented. “I suppose I’m protesting too much,” she said. “I never used to overdo it. Nothing worse than false modesty in a performer.”

Thurston laughed. He reached past me and took Nan’s hand. I released my hold on her, and he guided her up the broad stairs.

“I was going to offer you coffee,” he said, “but that dress merits champagne.”

“A man after my own heart,” she said.

There was nothing Nan liked better than an excuse to have champagne during the day. Not that she was a heavy drinker; she wasn’t much of a drinker at all. But she’d explained to me years ago that champagne was an exception. Drinking it is simply telling life that its finer moments are appreciated.

“I’ll have some too,” I said. We hadn’t had much call for celebration in the past few years.

“You have a show in three hours,” Nan said.

“And the owner tries not to directly break laws. Unless it’s to put you a few hundred feet above a city,” Thurston said.

I shut the door behind me. “Woe.”

The office had a comfortable seating area in what would have been the living room, with a buttery leather couch and chairs and a polished coffee table in between. A big desk covered in papers took up the rest of the cabin. It was outfitted with state-of-the-art computers and phones and gadgets, and there was a kitchen with a fridge and a coffeemaker beyond it.

Thurston waved Nan onto the couch, and I noticed a heavy leather valise on the table. He made his way to the fridge and selected a bottle of champagne. I sank into a chair as the cork sighed open. He filled a glass for Nan, and carried the bottle over with him to hand the glass to her.

Nan took the flute, and a sip. Her eyebrows lifted. “This is a nice vintage.”

Thurston waved, embarrassed. “I’m honored to have you here. The amazing Nancy Maroni. You are a legend—not least because you retired well before you had to.”

Nan downed more of her drink instead of answering. The bubbles rioted in the glass. I frowned. Thurston knew at least a little about why she’d left.

“Nan has many gifts. For my whole childhood, people lined up before our shows to have her read their tarot. Very popular.”

“To tell the future is definitely a gift. To be able to influence success or failure,” Thurston said. “The businessman in me is jealous.”

Nan took another drink.

“I don’t think I ever heard what made you decide to start your own circus,” I said.

“Me either,” Nan murmured.

He shrugged. “I’ve always been a circophile, and when you’ve made as much money as I have, you can afford to indulge a few dreams. I wanted one of my own, and I want to make it the best in history.”

“A modest goal,” Nan said, dryly.

Thurston leaned forward and picked up the portfolio. “It’s why I started collecting the old posters and other memorabilia in earnest when the idea first occurred to me. What better way to learn my competition? We’re up against the golden age and its epic performers.” He looked at Nan. “Like Nancy Maroni and all the other greats of the past. Do you want to see?”

“Of course we do,” I said.

I stayed on high alert, listening closely to see if anything might implicate him in a vendetta against my family. But so far all he’d admitted to was an obsession with circus history. That wasn’t enough to prove anything.

Thurston unzipped the case to reveal posters in plastic slipcases. It was
quite a collection. He flipped past the first several posters, some of them faded with age and probably rarer than any baseball card.

The poster he stopped at was one I’d seen before—a painting of several flyers and, in big letters at the bottom, the act name, The Soaring Sloans, and the circus’s name beneath, The Chapman Brothers Circus & Menagerie. A blur of audience was dabbed into the background, and two trapeze artists with yellow and red feathered costumes passed each other in midair, having just released from their trapeze swings. The artist’s style wasn’t anything special, but it was nice enough.

Nan’s face softened and her fingers went to the poster’s edges, a light touch. “That’s me. My first big job. Well, it wasn’t that big, but it seemed like Broadway and Ringling and Hollywood all rolled up into one at the time. I was only sixteen. Do you want me to sign it?”

The young version of herself she’d tapped was a bottle blonde and feathered sketch on the platform. She hadn’t been well-known enough to be anything more than roughed in, but it was the first time she’d been included on a sell sheet. Nan was in her seventies now, and these were from more than fifty years ago. An eternity.

“You’d have to put down your champagne,” he said. “Let’s say you can sign them next visit, okay?”

Nan tilted her glass. “Happily.”

I didn’t want them to get too chummy. I still had my suspicions that Thurston might be the one so determined to keep rumors of Nan’s magic circulating—maybe even the one behind trying to upset her with the returning objects.

Thurston turned a few more pages. “What was it like back then?”

Another sip. “Not like now. People knew us. We were the last of your golden age. My mother and great-grandmother, they were the best of it, but we were the last. The audience was starting to get distracted—cars, TV, the war du jour, all of it.” She waved a hand. “But they still paid attention for a while.”

“Was it a close community? Sometimes I wonder if I’m doing things right here. Everyone seems to stick to their own. I apologize for the snubs your family has received.”

Nan grew serious. “Performers compete. Families do too. That’s the way of things. But it’s closer-knit than you think. People get bound up with each other, when they spend so many years bouncing around the same circuits. You may not see it every day, but the ties are there. That’s part of why they treat us the way they do. We went our own way a long time ago. We don’t belong anymore.”

“Ah,” he said, “I have to disagree. The Maronis are my stars. You do belong.” He flicked to another page. “I bet you remember this one.”

Even I nodded. A print of it hung in our hallway back home. Nan had gotten bigger billing, just two years later. Her face was the focal point of the poster, and radiated a swoon-inducing beauty.

“Yes. My mother knew these half-crazy flyers from Bohemia. She used to read the cards for them. She signed me with them, the year before she died, when one of their girls broke her leg in a missed catch. I was watching them rehearse—I’d been doing a solo swing act—and I remember the bone sticking out of her shin. This guy”—she pointed to a barrel-chested catcher—“was quite a charmer. Or thought he was. The chemistry between us gave a little extra to the performance, so I suppose I owe him.”