“It’s ninety degrees and these bloomers are riding up like gangbusters. So, yes, I did it on purpose.”
He gave a big, bearded smile—something I’d never seen him do when a crowd wasn’t watching.
“Fantastic!” he exclaimed. “We keep it. But we make you better, okay?”
We made me better.
Other performers saw me working with Kalishenko and figured if I could make the Mad Russian happy, maybe I was worth investing a minute in. Over the next five years, I apprenticed with everyone who’d have me. I learned how to juggle fire and walk over hot coals, the basics of costuming and makeup from the spec girls and the clown crew, bareback horse riding, sharpshooting, cold reading from Madame Fortuna, how to handle the big cats, and more about the residents of the reptile house than I was ever really comfortable with. I spent so much time in the House of Oddities, I could tell at a glance if a new exhibit was a fake and make a pretty good guess how the fakery was done.
There weren’t many skills I could learn from the born freaks in the sideshow. You’re either blessed with a tail or you’re not. But I felt more comfortable hanging around with the sideshow crew than with just about anyone else at the circus. I burned away a lot of late nights listening to stories about the good old days from the Alligator Boy or the Tattooed Woman.
I spent some time with the aerialists, but the high wire didn’t come natural to me. I can make it across a tightrope, but only at the cost of a bucket of sweat and a year off my life.
The lock-picking skills were developed during a short, ill-advised romance with a contortionist. He was only with the show for a summer, but during that time he taught me how to tackle any lock ever made; how to wriggle out of a straitjacket, both rigged and legit; and a few other things you don’t put on a résumé.
I even apprenticed with Mysterio, who turned out to be a halfway decent instructor once he learned that making passes at me gained him nothing but grief. I had such fast fingers he began using me as an audience plant. In front of a packed tent, I’d execute the smoothest deck-switch you ever saw. Or didn’t see.
In short, I became the circus’s jack-of-all-trades—able to assist just about any of the talent and filling in when necessary. Never stopped having to pad the bustier, though.
That’s where I was when my life intersected with Lillian Pentecost. The day after I accepted her offer, I began the next leg of my odd education.
She said in her pitch that she’d foot the bill for any training, and she was as good as her word. Over the next three years, I took classes in stenography, bookkeeping, law, target shooting, auto mechanics, and driving, among a host of other things. She even pulled some strings to mock me up a birth certificate, making me legally Willowjean Parker. With that bit of forgery in hand I was able to get a driver’s license, a private investigator’s license, and a permit to carry a pistol.
“I do not expect you will have much cause to use it,” Ms. P said when I picked up the latter. “But there are places you will be asked to go where it would be imprudent to be without a weapon.”
In reality, I spent more time in lecture halls than pool halls. A week didn’t go by where she didn’t announce a trip to see this or that expert give a lecture about invertebrates or astronomy or abnormal psychology.
“When am I going to need to know the difference between mold and a mushroom?” I asked before one such excursion. I was sore that this particular lecture was replacing a much-anticipated night at the Rivoli for the latest Hitchcock.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But it’s better to have the knowledge at hand and not need it than the reverse.”
I couldn’t argue. Though no case to date has hinged on either of us knowing the life cycle of fungus.
Anyhow, that was life—at least between cases.
When we were hot on a job, there was no time for lectures or movies and barely time for meals. One of my unwritten jobs—and there were many—was to make sure Ms. Pentecost got at least one square a day. A lot of times that meant steering her into the nearest diner and refusing to budge until she shoved a roast beef sandwich into her mouth.
This was an extension of one of my other unwritten jobs, which was to keep an eye on Ms. P’s health and make sure she didn’t push it so hard it did her harm. Her disease didn’t get too much worse in those first few years. There were good days and bad days. On the good days, you wouldn’t know she was sick at all and could mistake the cane for a fashion statement. On bad days, she would limp and stumble, and that hitch would creep into her voice. She was also tired more and in pain, though she tried not to show it.
Then there were the really bad days. The kind that lasted a week or more. Luckily, she didn’t have them too often.
All in all, it was a good life.
The Collins murder fell into our lap on a Tuesday morning in mid-November 1945. Much of that summer had been spent tracking down a firebug who was lighting up tenements in Harlem. Ms. Pentecost wrapped that up just in time for us to join the rest of the city in celebrating Japan’s surrender. After we shook off the hangover and swept up the confetti, we were immediately thrown into a homicide dressed up as a suicide—a bit of chicanery the police were unaware of until Ms. P gracefully pointed it out.
Just so you know, the climax of those cases consisted of short phone calls to the authorities. No getting all the suspects in a room and laying out the facts before pointing a finger. As much as I might like that kind of mystery novel, most of the time our cases ended with a quiet whisper in the right ear. No dramatic unmasking.
On that Tuesday morning, we were only a few days into our first break in a long time. I had a quick breakfast of eggs and biscuits at the kitchen table courtesy of Mrs. Campbell. She lives in a renovated carriage house attached to the back of the brownstone, so no matter how early I get up she’s already in the kitchen stirring and scrambling.
If you’re looking for her bio, there’s not much I can tell you. She’s widowed; she’s been with Ms. P forever; she’s originally from a place she calls the “Border Counties”; and while she can cook, clean, and generally keep a house, she can’t drive worth a damn. She rarely talks about herself, and by that time I had learned not to ask.
I opened and sorted the mail, then skimmed through my copies of that morning’s major New York papers, marking what articles to clip for our files. I moved on from that and began jotting down a list of phone calls I needed to make. Most were responses to requests for interviews, quotes, and pictures. Anything to keep Ms. Pentecost’s name out there and the phone ringing. I was finishing the list when the phone did exactly that.
“Pentecost Investigations. Will Parker speaking.”
A fussy patrician voice asked me if Ms. Pentecost would be available to meet with Rebecca and Randolph Collins that afternoon. At that moment, the great dame detective was still asleep. Since she’s practically nocturnal, it’s rare that you see her illuminated by morning sunlight. Luckily, she had long ago given me leave to use my best judgment when it came to scheduling consultations, and my best judgment was that we wanted in on the Collins case.