The Wickedest Showman Read online

  The Wickedest Showman:

  Paranormal in Manhattan Mystery:

  Book 14

  By Lotta Smith

  Copyright

  The Wickedest Showman © 2018 Lotta Smith.

  Cover copyright 2018 Molly Burton

  Editing and proofreading: Hot Tree Editing

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without express written permission from the author/and publisher.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, incidents and places are the products of the author’s imagination, and are used fictitiously. None of the characters in this book is based on an actual person. Any resemblance to locales, actual events, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and an unintentional.

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

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  Table of content

  GET WHOEVER FINDS WICKED FOR FREE!

  PROLOGUE

  Intermezzo: The Actors

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  EPILOGUE

  Sneak Peek: Wicked and the Beast

  About the author

  PROLOGUE

  “How about Anna for the baby’s name, Mandy?” Mom said perkily as she handed me a slice of her signature pineapple upside-down cake.

  “Anna?” I parroted as I received the cake, thanking her.

  “That’s a good name,” Jackie interjected, floating by my side. “I like that.”

  “Dad and I were going to name our third daughter Anna if we had one.” Mom winked.

  “Really?” Alicia and I said in unison, exchanging glances.

  So far, Alicia, my younger sister by two years, was the only sibling I’d ever had. I didn’t know that my parents ever intended to have another child.

  “I didn’t know that,” I said.

  “If that’s what you planned, why don’t I have a younger sister?” Alicia asked, leaning in. “If I had one, I could have had higher self-esteem. You have no idea how much it would have meant to me to have a younger sibling, especially a sister. If we had Anna, I wouldn’t be the baby of the family.”

  Mom chuckled. “I couldn’t become pregnant after delivering the two of you.”

  “Oh… sorry about that,” I mumbled.

  “Don’t be.” She shrugged. “We weren’t desperate to have another child, and neither of us was disappointed when I didn’t conceive. Besides that, the two of you gave us enough excitement and brouhaha, so we weren’t sure how we’d survive with a third child anyway.”

  “Oh….” Alicia and I exchanged another glance.

  Then Mom turned to Alicia. “You’re lucky we didn’t have Anna. If your self-esteem happened to be any higher, you might be living a different life now, and the changes might not be for the better. You have two beautiful daughters and a caring husband. If I were you, I’d be thankful for what I have and forget about obsessing over what might have been.”

  Alicia crossed her arms in mock defiance while I snorted. “Should I say thank you?” she said.

  “I suppose so, and you’re very welcome.” Mom smiled broadly. “Help yourselves to the cake.”

  Even though she was visiting the condo where I lived with my husband, Rick, the way she offered us the cake reminded me of my childhood. She seemed more like the housewife of our current residence than the visiting mother of the household.

  We thanked her and dug in. I couldn’t help but moan. Mom’s cake was so yummy.

  I’m Mandy Rowling, née Meyer, and I’m pregnant with my first child—a daughter, yay! At the sixth month of pregnancy, I’m on a half-maternity leave, which basically means I go to work with Rick, except on days when I’m not feeling well or when I have an appointment with my obstetrician, Dr. Frederika Bergman.

  Before conceiving, I’d been working as the chief agent of the Paranormal Cases Division at USCAB, a security-based conglomerate. Truthfully, I happened to be the only staff within my division, and my office was located in the corner of Rick’s office. But I usually omitted that part when introducing myself as a professional.

  On that day, I had an appointment, and Mom and Alicia met up with me at the café across from the clinic when it was over. Rick had a meeting he couldn’t skip, and Alicia had to drive her kids to midtown from Queens, so this arrangement worked fine. Mom had packed a lot of my favorite homemade food, and as soon as I was done at the doctor, she and Alicia helped me carry the food home and put it in the fridge.

  It was early afternoon and Rick was still at work, so we were having a Meyer women’s super-noisy teatime. Under normal circumstances, Nana Leonora would be sitting with us, giving us a dose of wicked humor and some profound insight on life while my lovely nieces ran around. Emma and Minty were in the middle of summer break, and at the moment, they were busy attending a one-day summer camp in midtown, building a robot by writing code and utilizing 3D-printer technology. In my youth, summer camp was all about exploring nature and other stuff I had zero interest in, but apparently the times had changed. As for Nana, she was away on a cruise trip, traveling to Palm Beach.

  We were in the middle of having tea and snacks at the dining table, and with a new baby girl awaiting to join our family, we were busy thinking about name possibilities.

  “So, what do you think about Anna?” Mom asked expectantly.

  “Anna. Hmm… Anna? Hey, what do you think about that? Tell Mommy what you think,” I said to the little person occupying my uterus, but she didn’t respond by kicking or wiggling.

  “It looks like she’s not moving,” Alicia observed, tilting her head with a fork in her hand. “You’re not gasping.”

  “You’re right. She’s quiet.” I nodded. “It’s like she’s asleep.”

  “Or maybe she doesn’t regard Anna as her potential name,” Alicia commented. “Anna isn’t a bad choice. It’s cute and there’s nothing weird about it. Some of Emma’s classmates have such strange names, like Hammie and Pepperoni. And guess what? Their parents aren’t in the pizza business. So Anna is a great option. Except it’s a really common name, so we’ll need a little bit of creativity with the middle name.”

  “Anyway, it’s a far better name compared to those weird names infesting society—such as Heiress and Princess,” Mom muttered, at risk of offending all the kids with such names and their parents all over the world. “The worst name is Princess. If she’s a real princess born in a royal family, she’d be called Princess Princess with her title, sounding like a total idiot. And if she’s a commoner, being called Princess is simply ridiculous. I’m sure everybody will call her Princess Commoner behind her back.”

  “I like Anna!” Jackie chimed in. “It’s a really cute name, and I’m ready to talk to baby Anna. And you can name her little sister Elsa—totally like in Frozen.” Then she started singing that viral song
that had been sung by everyone ranging from kindergarten kids to the inmates at maximum security prisons a few years ago.

  She wasn’t eating anything. Not because she happened to be one of those stick-thin women who practically ate nothing but air, but because she was a ghost. And she wasn’t just an ordinary ghost but the ghost of a drag queen. That day, she was dressed in a short silver dress with gold hues scattered all over the fabric. To complete her look, she was sporting a pair of sky-high heels embellished with baby pearls. According to her, she’d been a fashionista since she was a little girl trapped in a little boy’s body. She grew up to be a budding Broadway actor, Jackson Frederick Orchard, but after becoming a ghost following an untimely demise, she grew more and more adventurous when it came to her attire.

  “Come on, I haven’t even delivered my first child. I’m not ready to plan for having another.” I rolled my eyes and gasped as the little person in my uterus kicked me.

  “Did Anna kick your bladder again?” Jackie stopped singing as Mom and Alicia asked, “Is she kicking you?”

  “Oh yeah.” I nodded “Though I’m not sure if I’ll be calling her Anna. Hello, baby? I said pretty please do not kick my bladder, didn’t I?”

  “What? The baby kicks your bladder?” Mom’s eyes widened. “Oh my goodness, your baby is breech!”

  “Yes, she is,” I admitted. “She’s prepping herself to come out to the world by positioning herself in the same way as an adult.”

  “So you’ll be having a caesarean, right?” Alicia asked me.

  “I believe so. But at the same time, it’s possible for the baby to go back to the normal position. Still, at the moment, I’d prefer caesarean,” I said. “To be honest, the concept of an episiotomy scares me a lot more than a C-section. I know both Mom and you had the procedures and neither of you are telling me horror stories related to it, but vaginal delivery is a total mystery to me, and it’s so scary.”

  “You have a point.” Alicia grimaced. “I was so scared of having one. Having incisions in the lower abdomen is one thing, but having one so close to where you pee and do number two is a totally different story. I’m glad I delivered both of my girls via caesarean. At least I didn’t have to worry about having the wound contaminated while peeing and having a bowel movement. Of course, I had a caesarean because Emma had her umbilical cord wrapped around her neck over and over like a really extravagant necklace—or rather, a noose—just like you and I did when we were in Mom’s uterus. Minty wasn’t wearing her cord around her neck, but vaginal delivery following a caesarean is so risky.”

  Mom knitted her eyebrows. “Just wondering, but is your preference for caesarean over vaginal delivery related to the fact that both of you were delivered that way? Actually, I chose caesarean because my mother’s tale about her episiotomy was so traumatic.”

  “Oh yeah, now it’s official, an episiotomy is scary.” I rubbed my belly. “You can stay breech if you want to, but will you stop kicking my bladder?”

  The baby kicked my bladder in response.

  “Hey, I think she wants you to give her a sister or brother,” Jackie said. “And I strongly recommend naming her sibling Elsa if it turns out to be a girl.”

  “Oh.” I gasped as the little person kicked me once again. “I need to pee.” I stood up, rushing to the bathroom.

  When I came back to the table, Jackie squinted at my belly. “Oops, it looks like our baby doesn’t fancy being named Anna. And apparently she doesn’t like the idea of having a younger sister called Elsa.”

  “Exactly,” I said between gasps.

  Alicia patted my back and asked if I was okay.

  “I’m good. Thanks.” I offered a small smile. “The baby doesn’t seem to want to be named Anna, and she especially seems to hate having her younger sister named Elsa,” I repeated Jackie’s words, since my family couldn’t see or hear her.

  “That’s because Elsa is the name of the older sister,” Mom pointed out. “Fine. I’ll forget about Anna. We should forget about all names starting with A.”

  “That’s a good idea, but not so fast,” Alicia interjected. “You can’t name her Alicia. Alyssa needs to be crossed from the list of potential names too, because it sounds similar to Alicia. Also, you’re not naming her Alice because it’s Rick’s mom’s name.”

  “Right.” I nodded. “His feelings toward her are a little complicated. Not to mention, she tends to be a little bit of a drama queen. Hopefully the little one doesn’t inherit that trait from her.”

  Alice was Rick’s biological mother who walked out of his life to pursue her acting career when he was just three years old. Although he’d forgiven her for that—mostly because he got to spend his childhood with his super-duper stepmom, Clara—he tended to be annoyed whenever she attempted to butt into our lives. In my opinion, he loved her in his own way, but he loved her more when there was comfortable distance between the two of them. So far, his comfortable distance from Alice was between New York and Paris.

  “How about Clara?” Alicia said, “It doesn’t start with an A, but Rick totally adores his late stepmom.”

  “No, we’re not calling her Clara.” I shook my head. “If we name her Clara, Alice will have one heck of a temper tantrum.”

  “Of course she will,” Jackie chimed in. “And the next thing, the baby will be called Alice, with Clara as a middle name.”

  “Exactly.” I nodded and relayed her words to Mom and Alicia.

  “I can understand that,” Alicia said, wiggling her fingers. “When Emma was born, my mother-in-law seemed to expect us to name her after her. When we announced that we’d be calling her Emma, she didn’t complain, but she looked disappointed. Tony soothed her by emphasizing the importance of everyone in the family having different names to avoid confusion.”

  “Hmm, that’s a good way to explain the reason why we’re not naming our child Alice,” I said, taking a mental note of my little sister’s fantastic excuse. Then I added, “Also, Rick isn’t keen on naming our baby Clara anyway. You know, his stepmom died young, and we want the baby to have a long, healthy life.”

  “Of course, we all do,” Mom said earnestly. “Every parent wishes that for their children.”

  “That’s so true,” Alicia agreed, and I nodded.

  “Oh my God… I feel terrible.” Jackie buried her face in her hands. “I ended up dying while my parents are still alive.”

  “Don’t worry, Jackie. You’re such a sweetheart, and your mom and dad know that,” I cooed, moving my hand to look like I was patting her back. “You always visit them on their birthdays.”

  “Oh, that’s true!” The ghost perked up instantly. “And guess what? Nowadays they can feel me when I’m around.”

  “Isn’t that fabulous?” Alicia smiled, and Mom agreed with her as I relayed her words.

  “Thinking about baby names is so much fun!” Mom exclaimed. “Okay then, we have excluded A names, as well as family members, so Emma, Minty, Leonora, and Martha.”

  Following her words, we started on an endless alphabet game.

  Two hours later, Jackie eagerly suggested, “How about Diana? I always liked Princess Diana. Also, I saw a show in which the viewers called the host to tell their opinions about the most suitable woman to have her face on twenty-dollar bills, and one of them named Princess Diana. The host guy pointed out that Diana didn’t qualify as she was British and not American, but the woman didn’t buy his argument, saying, ‘You’ve got to be kidding. Princess Diana is American!’ Why don’t you share my opinion with Martha and Alicia?”

  “All right.” I sighed. “Jackie proposed the name Diana.”

  “Diana? I don’t think so.” Mom shook her head. Following hours of heated discussion, all of us were exhausted, but we couldn’t stop. “Diana reminds me of a former princess who ended up dying in a massive car wreck following a car chase with the paparazzi.”

  “Fine, why don’t we call it a day?” I suggested. “It’s about time to go pick up Emma and Minty, isn’t it
, Alicia?”

  “You’re right,” she agreed and stood up. “Mom, let’s go.”

  “Of course.” Mom nodded. “Okay then, tell Rick we said hi, will you?”

  “Sure.” I smiled. “It was such a pleasure having both of you. When Nana’s back, we’ll have another gathering when Rick’s home and have a lunch or dinner.”

  “Can you tell Alicia that I miss Emma and Minty, pretty please, Mandy?” Jackie said by my side.

  “Sure.” I did just what I was told.

  “We’ll be sure to bring my daughters next time.” Alicia grinned widely.

  “So, Mandy and darling baby, take care.” Mom touched my extended belly affectionately.

  “We will,” I said, and the baby kicked my bladder again.

  Intermezzo: The Actors

  Lilly stepped out into the center of the stage. “I wrote this letter.”

  The small crowd of people gathering for the occasion reacted in apparent shock. Some gasped, some shook their heads haplessly, and others whispered to each other.

  Lilly continued, declaring, “I’m moving out of this house.”

  Her voice was quiet, but at the same time clear and resonant, heard by the audience members sitting at the farthest areas from the stage.

  “Are you insane?” William demanded. Steering his wheelchair so he could look eye to eye with his daughter, he stared at her with obvious disbelief.

  “My moving out of here and this village was meant to be. I’ve always been destined to do so sooner or later. And there’s no reason that the day shouldn’t be today,” Lilly said, never averting her gaze from her father.

  “No! It shouldn’t be today! Are you leaving me on the day your mother has just passed away?”

  “That makes today even more important for me to leave here. Mother used to be the chain that bound me to this house and the land, and now that the chain is broken, I have to go. If I don’t leave now, I suspect I won’t be able to find my life!”

  The actress’s delivery of her lines was smooth and flawless, but Robert Hall, the actor playing the part of her father, stopped listening midway through her dialogue.