Dead people talked when they wanted to.

  Probably.

  She was still fumbling her way along the learning curve of these ramped-up paranormal experiences.

  A morning text pinged. Emma looked over at her phone, keeping one eye on the road. Jacinda wanted them to convene at the office before heading to the circus. The drive went fast, offering luck with lights.

  Emma soon found herself lingering around the Violent Crime Unit’s glass-walled conference room with a cup of coffee. Thankfully, she didn’t have long to wait.

  Mia and Denae, jelly doughnut in hand, wandered in next. She waved it at Emma, and Emma knew just what the agent would say if her mouth weren’t full. Running’s for you, and junk food’s for me. Still, Denae kept fit somehow, so Emma couldn’t fault her metabolism.

  More than that, though, the gesture eliminated a pressure that’d been tightening Emma’s nerves since the day before. In fact, Emma nearly sagged in her chair with relief from her jelly-doughnut hello. Any annoyance Denae had felt yesterday now seemed in the past, and they could get back to focusing on the case.

  No more missteps.

  Mia pulled out the chair beside her and collapsed into it. “Morning.” Her makeup was perfect, her black hair as neat as usual. But Emma still sensed that Mia hadn’t slept well. This was not the time to ask, though, as the other agents were already coming in and taking their seats.

  Leo caught her eye as he entered, but his nod gave away nothing. No one would have any idea they’d had an outside conversation, let alone a midnight circus search.

  Jacinda stood at the front of the conference room, waiting for everyone to settle. Why Jacinda had wanted them to start at the office, she couldn’t imagine, but that was the SSA’s call. She’d learned Jacinda had reasons for everything she did.

  “Morning.” Jacinda shut the door to the conference room and took a seat at the head of the table. “I’ve been alerted that the circus troupe is being visited by medical staff today for their yearly checkups, as well as counseling for their recent losses. An additional team will be visiting the crew staying at the hotel. Reggie O’Rourke sent Detective Griff and me emails about the plan very early this morning, but I didn’t see any reason to bother you with it during off-hours.”

  Denae scowled, wiping doughnut crumbs from her fingers with a violent swipe of her napkin. “Is that really necessary? Now? I mean, counseling, yes, absolutely, but—”

  Jacinda held a hand up, frowning. “Mr. O’Rourke said it was absolutely necessary. Something about checkups being required for insurance and that they couldn’t reschedule. He’s requested that we hold off on visiting the circus to continue our investigation until noon—”

  Emma jumped in. “Of all the backward-ass circus tricks—”

  Jacinda raised her voice to cover their protests. “And I’ve agreed.”

  Emma sat back in her seat with a huff. She probably looked like a pouting teenager, but she didn’t particularly care.

  Leo raised a hand, and Jacinda nodded at him to speak. “We’re all in agreement that O’Rourke’s doing everything he can to delay his own interview, right?”

  Emma and the others nodded. Jacinda was just about to speak again when Leo mentioned he had news about the man. Emma raised her eyebrows, surprised. Had Leo gone home and done more work? Was the man a machine?

  The room remained silent for a few seconds after Leo finished describing the rape charges leveled at O’Rourke.

  Emma took a breath and let it out. “He’s a class-A jerk. I’m going to lose my mind if we don’t question the bastard soon.”

  “Something we can agree on.” Jacinda glanced at the clock on the wall. “However, waiting ’til noon to go to the circus doesn’t mean we’re at a total standstill. We’ve got other things to keep us busy this morning.”

  Emma nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Vance, I’d like you to check in with forensics since you were already taking point on the fireworks. See if there are developments there on the exact cause of death for Mr. Perkins. After that, you and I’ll keep looking into O’Rourke and see what more we can find.” She slid her finger along her iPad. “Meanwhile, Penelope Dowe’s parents have come down from Pennsylvania and checked into the Marmarot Hotel. Now that their daughter’s death is part of the official investigation, they want to help in any way possible and have agreed to speak to us at ten thirty. Mia and Emma, you head to the Marmarot.”

  “How about us?” Leo asked, gesturing between Denae and himself.

  “Right. Also around ten thirty, Kyle Perkins’s parents will arrive at Dulles. They’re on a plane from California as we speak. They’ve agreed to be interviewed first thing. Leo and Denae, you’ll go to the airport. Leo, I made sure the Perkinses have your phone number in case they hit any delays or the flight details change. Any questions?”

  Emma stood up by way of answer, Mia right beside her.

  An acrobat’s parents weren’t exactly the interview she’d been geared up for, but they’d do for now.

  18

  Mia had no trouble picking out Michael and Judy Dowe when she and Emma stepped inside the Marmarot Hotel, a modern blue structure on the outskirts of D.C. Penelope’s parents couldn’t have been more out of place sitting in the metal-accented loveseat in the corner of the hotel lobby. Mia easily imagined them coming from a small town a young girl would’ve longed to escape from. In this case, Penelope joined a long line of runaways by joining a circus.

  The couple reminded Mia of her own parents. For a brief second, she’d even thought they were her own parents. The woman wore a conservative cobalt-blue cotton dress with a neat strand of pearls. Her husband sat stiffly in a dark fresh-off-the-discount-rack suit, the kind of suit only bought for weddings or funerals.

  No question which, in this case.

  Gripping her husband’s arm as if she might drown otherwise, Judy Dowe had the same perfectly formed lips as her daughter and the same straight brown hair. The father had the pinched air of a man who’d not been sleeping much but felt the need to keep up appearances regardless.

  Mia’s own father had shared that look after losing her brother, Ned. He still hadn’t gotten his easy smile back. Mia wasn’t sure that would ever happen.

  As if to outpace her thoughts, Mia strode toward the couple. Emma kept close on her heels.

  Michael Dowe stood first. He waved. “Agents?”

  “Mr. and Mrs. Dowe?” Mia shook the man’s hand and was about to shake the woman’s when the brunette wrapped her arms around her, squeezing tight. Mia glanced to Emma for help. The other agent only offered a small shrug. Emma’s blue eyes narrowed in sympathy.

  “You’re investigating my daughter’s…my daughter’s…” The woman broke off in a high-pitched sob and hugged Mia tighter as her husband stepped back, running a hand through his hair.

  Mia patted the woman on the back, trying to breathe despite Mrs. Dowe’s tight embrace. “Mrs. Dowe, why don’t we take a seat?”

  The woman choked off another sob but finally released her. She straightened her dress as she sat down. Her husband nodded at Mia and seated himself beside his wife.

  Emma took the lead, grasping Mrs. Dowe’s hand after she’d pulled a seat up across from them. “I’m Special Agent Emma Last, and this is my partner, Special Agent Mia Logan. We’re both incredibly sorry for your loss, Mr. and Mrs. Dowe. I can’t imagine what you’ve been through these last few weeks.”

  Emma released Mrs. Dowe’s hand and settled into her seat beside Mia. The grieving couple stayed silent for a moment before the husband cleared his throat.

  “Call me Michael.”

  He shifted in his chair, his hands going white in the knuckles as he gripped the table edge. Finally, he wrapped both hands around his wife’s. He wasn’t doing much better than she.

  “I’m Judy, of course.” The mother pulled a hand away from her husband’s to retrieve some tissues from a pocket hidden in the folds of her skirt. She dabbed her wet cheeks. “Any way we can help, that’s all we want.”

  Michael Dowe straightened up, drawing his hands together in front of him as if preparing to address a judge. But instead of the calm words Mia expected from the man, he scowled and all but hissed out his next statement. “We’re glad you’re looking into our girl’s death, you’d better believe. Minute we heard of her passing, I knew there was something off about it.”

  He leaned back from the table and let his shoulders droop, the venom leaving his voice as he continued. “Pen was always careful. Sharp as a tack. Her death didn’t feel right, but we took O’Rourke’s word it was an accident. That bastard.”

  “What else could we do?” Judy demanded. “We had to! At least, right then. And after that, I suppose we got busy with the funeral, then it just…well, it didn’t seem there was anything else we could do. Penelope was gone. Nothing would change that. We settled back to grieve, thinking we’d just have to…to…”

  “Accept it,” her husband finished for her.

  She choked, waving a hand in the air to signal she’d go on if they gave her a moment. “Not until we received that call yesterday about Penelope’s lines being tampered with. Then we decided we had to come to see if there was any way we could help.”

  Talking had done something to calm the woman. Judy sat back in her chair beside her husband, wrapping her hand around his bicep once again but without the same death grip she’d used earlier. The two of them had probably been married for decades. And Mia guessed their daughter had been their only child.

  Undoing the buttons on her suit jacket, Mia leaned in toward the couple and met Judy’s eyes. “How about we start with Penelope’s act? We understand she didn’t normally use a safety net or have operators on her lines. Was that her choice?”

  “It was entirely her choice.” Michael stopped short of saying anything more, but the words had been loaded with intention.

  Mia glanced back at Judy for an explanation.

  “We begged Penelope to use a safety net for her performances. She never mentioned the lines, and we’d never seen her perform. We didn’t know about them until we…” Judy shook her head, her eyes going far away. “It’s almost unheard of in modern circuses for a trapeze artist to perform without a net. But Penelope said her act was one of the biggest draws for the Ruby Red, specifically because there was no net. She wouldn’t listen to reason. And she was so talented…I promise you, she could’ve done better than that ragtag circus if she wanted to. Cirque du Soleil would’ve taken her in a heartbeat. Performing without a net wasn’t ever right.”

  “The ringmaster’s fault, I guarantee.” Michael sat straighter in his seat again, making a point of meeting Emma’s eyes and then Mia’s. “Penelope was insanely loyal to that man. Too loyal.” He gripped his wife’s hand. “As a twenty-six-year-old woman, she had to make her own decisions, but me and Judy both had a feeling that…that…”

  He trailed off, shaking his head and looking down at his lap.

  “Agents.” Judy took a deep breath. “We…Michael and I, that is…we think Penelope was, uh, involved with him.”

  Mia waited for the woman to go on before prodding her. “You think she was intimately involved with Reggie O’Rourke?”

  Michael nodded once, hard and fast. “It sickened us. She behaved so strangely there for a little while. Secretive. It had to have something to do with O’Rourke. There’s something off about that man. Even if you ignore the age difference between them, it just wouldn’t have been right.”

  “What do you think she was being secretive about?”

  A small choking sound escaped Judy’s throat. “We think…we think…she might’ve had his baby.”

  “She did have a baby.” Michael shifted in his seat. His discomfort was clear. “She took a leave of absence from the circus and stayed with us. When she had the baby, she adopted him out at birth.”

  “We only got to see him that one time in the hospital.” Judy was a case study in misery. “He was beautiful. But she wouldn’t tell us who the father was. And she rushed right back to the circus.”

  “What makes you think Reggie O’Rourke is the baby’s father?” Mia tried not to think about the web of intrigue between all the circus performers. Perhaps it was less like a real family and more like a family from a low-budget soap opera.

  “The way she would shut down whenever we asked about him. Penelope knew he’d taken advantage of her. But she kept on defending him.”

  Emma cleared her throat. “I promise we’re looking into Mr. O’Rourke, as well as anyone else who could possibly have played a part in your daughter’s murder.”

  Mia was glad Emma took over the questioning. The sadness Mia felt for the Dowes had turned into a lump in her throat. Losing a daughter to an accident was bad enough, but the Dowes had suspected Penelope’s choices had steered her into danger. They’d been powerless to change her circumstances and had been proven right with her death…

  The man and woman before her had to be experiencing the special torture of survivor’s guilt.

  Emma and Mia asked more questions about Penelope’s act, as well as what the couple knew about the other circus members. Nothing stood out more than their suspicion of the ringmaster’s alleged relationship with their daughter.

  When they stood to go, Mia gripped each parent’s hand in turn. “I hope you both can take some comfort in knowing your daughter lived a good life.” She paused, swallowing emotion down into her gut. “From everything we’ve heard, Penelope was a beautiful, talented woman who was loved by all who knew her.”

  Emma nodded. “She was like a big sister to the young trick rider who travels with the circus. There’s a lot of sorrow going around over the loss of your daughter.”

  Mia let the grieving mother hug her again and gripped her in return.

  Grief for her brother had risen in her gut with each word these heartbroken parents had spoken about their daughter’s life and talent being stolen from the world too soon. Their sorrow echoed the sadness Mia pushed down every day.

  She only wished there was more she could say. Hell, she wished any words at all could fix the tragedy the couple found themselves living through.

  Unfortunately, she knew better. Nothing fixed a tragedy like this.

  Not even justice, much as she sometimes liked to pretend otherwise.

  19

  At the airport, Leo and Denae stopped to let a family of four lumber across their path through the heart of the lobby. Groups of people coming and going crossed in front of them, some hauling what looked like a month’s worth of luggage.

  Denae dodged an efficient-looking flight attendant hauling a rolling suitcase. “Are Perkins’s parents planning on getting right back onto a plane or what? Why not just meet us at pickup?”

  “Heck if I know.” Leo glanced at his phone again. “Amy Perkins said to meet them at the tavern just this side of security. Said they’ll wait by the hostess stand for us.”

  “I see it.” Denae took the lead, her boot heels joining the echoes of the other percussive footsteps of passengers, flight crews, and staff, scattering in different directions. For a Tuesday morning, the airport wasn’t too busy, but Leo would’ve preferred to pick the couple up and drive them to their hotel or just meet them there. Who chose to have a meeting in an airport?

  “That must be them,” Denae muttered as they came within sight of the overpriced tavern.

  A just-past-middle-aged couple stood waiting near the host stand. Both Mr. and Mrs. Perkins were engrossed in their smartphones rather than focusing on each other or anything else. Their carry-ons partially blocked the main aisle into the tavern, but neither seemed concerned about the other customers and staff being forced to step around the obstruction.

  Leo held out his hand to shake and begin the introduction.

  Ignoring him, Mrs. Perkins turned to the host and demanded a table for four.

  Leo transferred his attention to the man. “Mr. Perkins, I’m Special Agent Leo Ambrose, and this is my partner, Special Agent Denae Monroe.”

  The man held out a business card rather than shaking his hand.

  “Uh, thank you.” Leo took the card and considered throwing it in the trash. Instead, he pocketed it.

  Strange.

  “We know who you are, Agent, thank you.” Alcohol steamed from Mr. Perkins’s mouth as he spoke. “If you don’t mind, I need a drink, so let’s do that and get this question stuff over with, all right?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he turned away to follow his wife. She jounced her carry-on through the aisles of the tavern.

  Denae elbowed Leo’s shoulder. “Not quite grief-stricken, huh?”

  “Everybody handles grief different, I guess.”

  Denae snorted, picking up on his sarcasm. “Drowning their sorrows?”

  Keeping a few steps back, he watched the couple as they followed the host to a booth in the corner. Mr. Perkins all but fell onto the bench while Mrs. Perkins tucked their carry-ons against the wall.

  Before Leo and Denae could sit, Mr. Perkins was already ordering a whiskey sour. To her credit, the host didn’t flinch at the midmorning request or tell the man it wasn’t her job to get the drink order. Mr. Perkins also ordered a coffee and water for his wife. The host raised her eyebrows in question at Leo next.

  “Just water, thanks.”

  Denae gestured to the coffee cup turned down in front of her. “Strong coffee, if you could.”

  “Absolutely. We’ll be serving lunch beginning at eleven o’clock.” The host headed off.

  Leo brought his attention back to the couple across from him.

  Ted Perkins was a balding man sporting a long-sleeved polo shirt and dress slacks. Leo tried to see Kyle the Strongman in his father’s features but couldn’t quite make it happen. Perkins was on the thin side with no discernible biceps. His clothes hung straight, without a bulge or piece of material out of place.

  In the photos Leo had seen of Kyle, the weight lifter’s arms had practically popped out of their sleeves. Kyle’s neck had been thick and his shoulders solid. Had he started out thin like Dad?