“Or you could do your goddamn job, look at the area, get the crime scene techs out here, and, you know, use your critical thinking skills to see that this was a horrible accident,” I corrected him.
“You’re coming with me…” He stepped forward, his hands already on his belt where most likely his handcuffs had once been. But his large girth hid them from sight and touch, meaning he just fumbled there looking like an idiot before pointing at the loitering deputies around him. “Arrest her.”
They all looked on as if they knew it was bad yet still felt the need to follow orders.
“For what, Officer?” Coffey asked. “You’re persecuting her because of her religious and philosophical beliefs?”
The sheriff didn’t respond, and his deputies started to shuffle from foot to foot.
“Or is it because, culturally, that’s something that she’s not comfortable with? It’d be like using a racial slur at this point. Her culture doesn’t allow pointing. It is harmful to them,” Coffey countered. “Either way, it doesn’t look good for you or your deputies if you pursue this any further. Not to mention, you’ve been more focused on her than the dead body—which is still sitting there, by the way, without a single one of you yet to look at or process any information. I think the press would be very interested in that. Then there’s the fact that this is one of the biggest circuses in the world. They have thousands and thousands of people from all walks of life to come here. They’re bigger than you are, and generally, that means you don’t mess with them.”
“And who are you to Miss…” He hesitated, having not gotten my name or any of our names. Which would likely be one of the first things an officer of the law would ask upon arrival at a death scene.
“You gonna do your job now?” one of my sisters muttered.
“I was already doing my job,” Bright snapped.
“Um, no, you weren’t,” I heard in the crowd of workers that’d solidly built up behind my back.
If there was one thing I could say about the circus, it was one large family. We might not all get along, or like each other for that matter, but we had each other’s backs, no matter what.
“Kissimmee Singh,” I answered.
His eyes narrowed. “I’ll add another charge to your already growing list if you don’t give me your real name.”
I felt Coffey’s arm tighten around my waist as if he was preparing himself for my launch at the stupid man in front of me.
I leaned back against him and replied to the sheriff.
“My name is Kissimmee,” I answered. “And you would obviously know ‘Singh’ is correct if you looked around the circus even a little bit.”
Because mostly ‘Singh’ was on every surface everywhere. The flyers. The tents. The poles. The porta potties.
Hell, it was even on a flyer that’d rolled right up to his leg and stuck to it during our conversation.
He’d never looked down at it once.
“That’s a stupid enough name that it could be fake,” Bright declared.
Coffey growled in his throat, but it was Zip who said, “What kind of name is fucking ‘Bright’ for a man who obviously isn’t?”
So we might give each other shit about our names, but we sure the hell didn’t allow other people to.
“That’s a last name,” Bright said defensively.
“Well, last name or not, you’re called it. And I happen to disagree with the meaning of the word,” Zip countered.
Bright narrowed his eyes at her, his face now red with anger.
“Um, sir?” one of the deputies asked. “This is a gunshot wound.”
My head whipped around.
Coffey stiffened against me.
The deputy who’d started doing his job finally pointed at the body.
I looked as well and saw that the deputy had finally flipped her over, and sure enough, there was a hole in her forehead.
My belly heaved all over again.
I turned in Coffey’s arms, ran toward the bushes that still smelled of my puke from earlier, and dry heaved.
Someone caught my hair, but I didn’t question who until I was done.
When I turned, it was to see Coffey looking at me sympathetically.
“I didn’t kill her,” I blurted.
His eyes were soft when he said, “Normally, when people kill other people, the sight of their dead body and their actions wouldn’t cause them to be sick.”
I placed my hand over my mouth. “What are you doing here?”
He pulled a handkerchief, a real, honest-to-God handkerchief, out of his pocket and handed it to me.
It was embroidered with his initials.
I curled it in my hands and said, “If I use this, it’ll need washing.”
He grinned at me. “That’s the idea.”
I wiped my mouth and raised my brows at him, waiting for him to answer.
He did, eventually saying, “My dad left me millions of dollars and the suggestion to get out of town while I still could.”
“Wow,” I said. “That’s a lot of money. What are you going to do with it?”
His grin widened when he said, “Looks like I might be bailing you out of jail with it.”
I punched him in the arm.
“Not funny,” I said sullenly. “Come on. Let’s go back over there.”
“All of you need to come down to the station and give a statement,” the sheriff grumbled as we walked back up. “Even you, sweetie.”
He started to point at me again but showed the first stroke of intelligence he’d shown the entire time and dropped it before he did.
I gritted my teeth and said, “I’ll meet you down there.”
“You better, or you’ll wish you did,” he grumbled.
Then he walked back to the car.
“Not a single person here knows what he’s doing,” Keene grumbled. “So you’re working here now?”
Coffey offered Keene his hand and said, “New chef at your service.”
“Oh, thank fuck.” Keene took his hand and shook it. “I’ve never been happier to see another man in my life.”
Everyone around us laughed, even my sisters.
Because it was true.
There were a lot of females in the circus, but there were just as many males. They just didn’t tend to hang out with us because of the “overload of estrogen” that we tended to give off. According to some of the other men, anyway.
“What the hell happened, Simi?” Keene asked, then looked to Coffey. “Do you know?”
I looked at Coffey, too.
God, he was really here.
“I got here in time to see her losing her cool,” he admitted, his eyes apologetic, as if he’d wished he’d been here earlier.
I smiled, then rubbed my hands against my eyes.
“I couldn’t find my silk or Mary, who’s usually the one who sets it up with a few of the men,” I added for Coffey’s benefit. I looked at Coffey, then back to Keene. “So Rosie offered to help me as we started talking about not seeing Mary for a while. We unlocked the trailer door, and she fell out.”
Keene grimaced, then looked back toward the trailer.
“There’s no blood,” he murmured.
“There should be blood,” Coffey confirmed. “The fact that there’s absolutely zero means she was dumped into the trailer after she’d bled out. She also looks clean as well. Like they washed her off first.”