The Ladies of the Secret Circus Constance Sayers (e books free to read .TXT) 📖

record rotation until she had it. The song wasn’t familiar. She tabbed the notes quickly on a piece of scrap paper so she wouldn’t lose them.

As she heard the door open for the overnight person to relieve her, she tried the record once again. This time the familiar warble had replaced the guitar opening.

The song was gone.

After gathering her purse, Lara walked at a clipped pace down Main Street toward the restaurant two blocks away. The dress shop on the corner had closed a month before, leaving a vacant glass space with the bodies of naked plastic mannequins, legs and arms akimbo and piled in a corner like a crime scene. She was rattled.

What had just happened in there? It was clearly backmasking—recorded messages in an album that could only be heard when the song was played backward. Musicians did it occasionally, for effect. Famously, the Beatles did it in the song “Revolution 9”; listeners could hear “Turn me on, dead man,” which led to the whole “Paul Is Dead” conspiracy. As a kid, Lara was sent to church camp with Caren. On the first morning, after singing rousing versions of “I’m in the Lord’s Army,” the kids were served cookies and Hawaiian Punch and told how rock musicians were coding secret messages to the devil in their albums. Dutifully, the boys in the group pledged to offer their AC/DC and Led Zeppelin records for burning. When Jason heard that Lara needed to take some records to be destroyed at a camp activity, he never allowed her to go back.

But the song she’d just heard on that album did contain a recorded message that could only be heard when the album was played in reverse. Yet Lara had played that song hundreds of times and knew the sound had never been there before. And even if Tending had used it, backmasking was pressed into the vinyl and couldn’t just disappear as that song had.

No, the song had been a message for her.

One of the two restaurants serving dinner until eleven, Delilah’s was busy. Lara perched herself on a pleather barstool near the door. Soon she was swirling a glass of Chardonnay the color of concentrated piss. It was some tart, shitty vintage, “fruit forward” they called it, probably from a box in Delilah’s giant fridge that would give her a headache in a few hours. Rubbing her neck, she thought a good night’s sleep was soon in order.

“Poor girl. Didn’t anyone warn you. The wine here is awful.”

Lara smiled at the sound of his voice, a hint of his deep Virginian Southern drawl coming through in the word wine. She turned to face Ben Archer. “What are you having, then?”

“Well, certainly not the wine.” Rolling up the sleeves on his crisp white dress shirt, he scanned the menu.

“How on earth do you fold those?” She reached over and tugged at one. “They’re like plaster slabs. Can I hang them in my house?”

“Oh, shut up,” he said, smirking. Unbuttoning the other cuff, he struggled as the fabric crunched. “It’s heavy starch, I’ll have you know, the Southern gentleman’s wardrobe staple.” He laughed, satisfied with the length of the sleeve.

“Where’s the uniform?”

“I’ve got court this week.” Next he began to tug at his necktie, twisting in an attempt to free himself.

Lara recognized the striped blue silk tie as one of his recent birthday gifts. Two weeks ago he’d turned forty—a cause for much celebration by everyone but him. There had been a party, an awkward affair with people from the courthouse and others who knew him casually. At his party, Ben had been gracious, but he seemed like he was dying to leave before the cake was wheeled out. His secretary (yes, they still called her that) had been the one to spot Ben’s driver’s license and notice the milestone date, which had led to a phone tree (they still had those, too). Since he was also newly divorced, his party had been filled with widows and divorcées who’d brought presents with them—house plants, beer mugs, golf balls (even though Ben wore a police uniform most days and never golfed), as well as neckties in every hue of blue.

She pushed her wine away and turned her stool toward him. “You don’t have to wear them all, you know.” She kept her hands on her glass, but the desire to touch the tie to feel the quality of silk under her fingers was strong.

“The hell I don’t.” He leaned in, and she felt his breath on her neck. “They watch.”

Lara snorted and wine came out her nose. He wasn’t wrong. As if on cue, Del—Delilah’s owner, who was serving as bartender—put her hand on her hip. “Nice tie, Ben. Who got you that one?”

“Pepper Maguire, I do believe.”

They’d have been better off tucked away in a quiet booth, but they always sat at the bar. She had never been self-conscious about their friendship, until recently. Lately Lara had noticed people glancing up over their salads or craning their necks to get a glimpse of them together. She wondered if they’d been doing that for months and she just never paid attention.

At a nearby booth, Lara could see Kim Landau, the Kerrigan Falls Express reporter, watching them. She and Ben avoided each other in that charged way that people who’d accidentally slept together then regretted it later did. “I saw Marla earlier today.”

“And how is my former half doing?” Ben glanced up as Del slid his usual drink, a Jameson straight, in front of him.

“She was picking up a photo at Gaston Boucher’s.”

“Well, he does do all of her framing.” Ben took a sip of his drink. “And not at a discount, either, might I add.” He shook his head. “She has a framing habit.”

“She is a photographer.”

“Well, wedding photography isn’t that lucrative.”

“I hired the other photographer in town,” said Lara, considering what he’d said. “It was an early night for him.”

From the corner of her eye, she