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

“But you don’t believe that?”

“No,” he said. “I do not believe that Todd Sutton was cooking up anything in his garage.” Privately, Ben agreed with the state police that there was a logical explanation for these disappearances. It just required good, old-fashioned police work to solve it.

“But it doesn’t explain the other case. Was that car wiped clean as well?”

Peter Beaumont’s car was, indeed, wiped clean, but Michelle Hixson did not appear to have that information and he wasn’t going to enlighten her further. “I think they are connected cases, Miss Hixson, but I don’t think they’re supernatural. Beyond that, I cannot say more. Anything else that you need?”

“I need a good photo of both Todd Sutton and Peter Beaumont.”

“I can get you those.”

“We’re also having a sketch artist draw an aged composite of Peter Beaumont. Maybe someone has been living next door to him for thirty years.”

“Anything that I can do to help.” Ben nodded.

She stood up and gathered her things. He was pretty sure that she’d already been to see Kim Landau. As she shut the door behind her, Ben stared at the time line on the board. He felt like an idiot. A small-town police chief, he was in over his head with these cases. She knew it and he knew it; he just didn’t want to read about it.

As he always did when he stood in front of this board, he studied the details to see if there was something he’d missed. Todd Sutton had gotten up around eight that morning and then played nine rounds of golf with Chet. After golf, he bought a chicken sandwich at Burger King at eleven forty-one A.M.; the receipt was found on the floor of the car. Although he’d eaten and drunk in the car, no DNA was found there—a near impossibility. Sutton returned to his house around eleven fifty A.M., placing his golf clubs in the garage. Before getting ready for his wedding, he did an odd thing: He told his stepfather, Fred Sutton, that he would be heading to Zippy Wash to clean his beloved Mustang. Lara Barnes had rented a vintage car for the wedding, so the couple wouldn’t be using Sutton’s car for the ceremony, making the trip to Zippy Wash seem like an excuse to get away for some time. Was it nerves? Did Sutton meet with someone? When Fred and Betty Sutton departed for the church around three thirty P.M., Todd’s tuxedo was still draped on the bed. Assuming he was running late, they took it with them to the church. At four thirty P.M., when the ceremony was about to begin and there was no sign of Todd, they began searching for him. His car showed up the following morning at five o’clock on Wickelow Bend.

If Sutton did go to Zippy Wash, there was no evidence of it. Assuming he did go, he paid with coins and was not spotted by the cashier on duty. While the car had been wiped clean, it was messy, wrappers strewn all over the seats. Sutton had probably never made it to the car wash or he’d never intended to go. The last people who admitted to seeing Sutton were his mother and stepfather. Over the next two days, there had been “sightings” of him—Dulles Airport being the most famous, but it had not been credible. Ben had seen the security tapes himself and the man had not been Todd Sutton.

Next to Todd’s time line was Peter Beaumont’s. Peter Beaumont had practiced with the band the night before, then failed to show up at a concert at the Skyline Nightclub. Jason Barnes noted that they delayed the band’s start for an hour and finally had to go onstage without him. Jason and the bass player had to alternate as lead singer for the night. Unlike Todd Sutton, Peter Beaumont’s whereabouts the day of his disappearance were a mystery. No one admitted to having seen him for twenty-four hours. He lived with his mother, who was on vacation in the Finger Lakes with her boyfriend at the time.

But there was one specific link between the two cases that had been nagging Ben for months now. Jason Barnes had been the bandmate and best friend of one victim and the prospective father-in-law of the other. Physically, Jason Barnes could have committed a crime in either scenario. He was a young man when Peter went missing and older, but still physically able to dispose of a body, at the time of Todd Sutton’s more recent disappearance. Ben hated to think of Lara’s father this way, but it was the only connection he could find between the two men. He sighed. That wasn’t a satisfying theory. Why would Jason Barnes harm the man who was his possible ticket to stardom?

“Oh, Lara.” He sighed and ran his hands over his face, hoping, for her sake, he was wrong.

His phone rang. It was Doyle in the next room. “Kim Landau is hot to find you. She wanted you to call her when the lady from the Post left.”

“Did she say why?”

“Nah, she said to call her.” He paused. “That you’d have the number. Do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Have her number?”

He sighed. “I do.” He was sure that if he could see Doyle’s face, it would have a smirk on it like a sixteen-year-old boy.

He picked up the phone and punched in Kim’s number.

“Doyle said Michelle Hixson was already there.” Kim didn’t even wait for hello.

“She was.”

“A bit tenacious, don’t you think?”

“A bit is being kind.”

Kim laughed. “In preparation for her interview, I think I found a clue that might help you. I didn’t mention this to Michelle Hixson. Meet you at the diner in five?”

“Sure.” He wasn’t sure if he was going to regret this or not. Right after he and Marla had separated, he’d made the mistake of sleeping with Kim Landau one time. It had been nothing short of a disaster. Recently, she’d sent him signs