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I had about eight thousand things to do, and one of those was practice.
So that was my goal for this morning, even though the last thing I wanted to do was do anything strenuous after yesterday.
But the circus didn’t wait for anyone, not even me.
I went to the changing room in our bus—which was really the only bedroom we had that we’d made into a closet for everyone—and got dressed for the day.
I made sure to tiptoe quietly past all the beds that were still occupied, then headed outside to where the circus was about to come alive around us.
I was up with the birds usually, and today was no different.
I was one of the first ones in the entire camp to be up, and I waved at the few people that I saw.
One of which wasn’t the person that I was looking for.
I frowned and made a circle of the camp, noting that Mary was nowhere to be found.
Mary was the one in charge of getting my silk hung, and not only was she absent, but so was my silk, which was usually up by this point.
“Has anyone seen Mary?” I called out.
I hadn’t seen Mary since we’d locked up the trailers and moved to our newest location.
“No,” Rosie called. “But I can help you get it set up really quick before I go feed the boys.”
She had a large dead rat in her hand for the snake and two very large bowls of meat.
“Thank you,” I said softly. “And yes, that trailer.”
Rosie had just gotten the lock off of the trailer and had popped one of the handles when the smell hit us.
A few other people joined us, needing their own stuff out of this particular trailer.
“Oh shit,” I heard someone say.
I looked over and saw Rosie looking at me with horror in her eyes.
“What?” I asked.
“Mary,” she whispered. “Mary is in there.”
That’s when the full intensity of the smell hit me.
Just then, Mary fell out of the trailer face-first onto the ground, as if she’d been standing at the door waiting to get out, but that opportunity had never come for her.
“Go get Keene,” I said as I covered my mouth and nose.
But it did no good.
I sprinted away, running as fast as my legs would take me, and threw up in the bushes closest to the lot.
“Keene’s gone,” someone said. “He pulled out of the lot like his ass was on fire. Apparently, Val told him he needed to go get breakfast.”
I cursed my rotten luck.
“What’s going on?” I heard Roberto ask. Then he said, “Oh, fuckin’ A.”
Fuckin’ A, indeed.
Had this been any other location but this one, we would’ve found Mary within two days.
But in this instance, we’d taken a whole two weeks off, like we did every year at this time. And she’d been locked up inside that trailer for a full two weeks without food, water or air conditioning.
“Someone call 9-1-1,” Roberto said. “And back away from the trailer. This is going to be investigated, and the fewer people in this, the better.”
Rosie called, and I stared at the dead body of one of my greatest friends and mentors.
My belly roiled all over again, but this time, I managed not to throw up.
I swallowed the bile and waited for the police to show.
Or one of my sisters.
But despite the commotion of the dead body, and someone pounding on the door of the motor home we shared, none of them had come out.
Either they were still asleep or not coming anywhere close.
Neither of which I could blame them for.
It took the police a solid forty minutes to arrive, and that wasn’t because they were twenty minutes away. No, it was because, apparently, the sheriff was eating lunch and couldn’t get out here for that long.
How did we know that?
Because another one of our circus workers had been at the diner eating when the news of our dead body had arrived.
His words had been, “Is she dead dead, and will it matter how long it takes for me to finish my eggs?”
At the answer of “no,” he’d decided to continue to take his time as had the rest of his deputies that’d been dining with them.
So there we were, all stuck in limbo, wondering what in the hell we should do.
Obviously, setting up for the circus would have to wait…right?
And also, obviously, they would need the people that’d found the body—i.e., me—to stay and hang around.
But the rest of them? Well, they could probably get to work, right?
Executive decision made, I turned to them all.
“Everyone that wasn’t directly related to this incident.” I pointed. “Get your duties done if you can. If you can’t because you need whatever is in this trailer, help someone else who can. Make yourself scarce and get work done fast because I have a feeling the moment that they get here, they’re gonna make us stop setting up.”
