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The author's short mysteries have appeared in Futures Mysterious Anthology Magazine, Mysterical-E, Mouth Full of Bullets, Detective Mystery Stories, Crime and Suspense, Great Mystery and Suspense Magazine, Crimson Dagger, Web Mystery Magazine, Silver Moon, Dana Literary Society's Online Journal, among others. He is a two-time winner of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine's "Mysterious Photo" Contest.

Olaf Magnuson had figured it out long ago. He would have done better in life selling sandals in Antarctica. The aches and pains of middle age stamped the grim reality of failure into his bones. Well, nobody ever promised him a rose garden when he joined up with "Colossal Shows! World's Greatest Traveling Carnival." But nobody told him he'd spend his declining years watching frustrated Michael Jordan wannabes trying to shoot basketballs through a hoop a hair too small for all but the luckiest. A change of venue was overdue. Yeah, way overdue.

Magnuson figured Trixie would buy into the scheme to lift both of their lives out of the pits, no questions asked. So he was ticked when she made Sunday school talk. "I dunno," Trixie said, parsing the morality. "Burglary is one thing, murder another, if that's what you're thinkin'."

Magnuson sighed. Then he sat her down in a tent behind a row of tacky midway come-on games. Diplomacy was not Magnuson's usual fare. But this might be the time to stoop to it. Sweat oozed from his deeply furrowed brow in the oppressive August heat.

"Do you want to waste your life connin' yokels out of quarters?" he asked, putting on a look of fatherly concern.

Trixie pursed her scarlet lips and wrinkled her brow until the frown threatened to crack meticulously applied mascara. Trixie's career as a hair stylist had hit a bump in the road when one of The Cuttery's customers fingered her for pinching a pricey necklace of Mikimotos. She landed at "Colossal Shows" on the first bounce.

"Hey, I'm good at this carney stuff, and this body of mine don't hurt business," she reminded Magnuson, running her hand wavelike over ample hips.

Trixie knew all right how to sweet-talk suckers into shooting popguns at rows of moving ducks. Crooked corks, covertly inserted in the barrels, gave players no better than a one in twenty chance of a winning hit. But the odds never stopped farmhands and factory hunks from aiming for the Big Prize, a cheesy giant stuffed lion, to tempt their wide-eyed girl friends.

Magnuson warmed to his pitch. "You could be kickin' back on a Caribbean beach, sittin' on a stash just beggin' to be spent," he said, raising the ante. Then he dropped an octave. "Well, no matter what, I'm outta here. I'm fed up with hayseeds shootin' air balls. You can rot here––or wallow in the sand, sun and sea. But it's easy street for me."

She stared out at the Octopus Ride, loaded with screaming kids. It sped around on its axis, metal arms seesawing within a scant foot of the ground.

"Why do they always set me up next to that thing?" she whined. "I can stand the stupid popgun noise. But those screaming kids, day and night. They bug me. I begged for placement next to the ferris wheel. That's dignified. But do ya think I got it?"

Trixie shrugged, inviting him to go on. So he sketched out his brilliant plan. "Otto Drummer, a carney pro from way back, has a pile––maybe $50,000, maybe more, stashed in a metal box. He's scared of banks," Magnuson confided. "It's nix on burglary, as I told you before, because Drummer knows I'm on to his hoard. If it goes missin', he's got the cops on me, pronto." Trixie took a finishing swipe with the file at her purple nails.

"If you're wonderin' how Drummer got all that loot," he went on, "it's simple. He's been at this game a long time. He's got the carousel––a gold mine these days. He coined some dough in the old days, too, doin' odd jobs for ‘Slippery Slick Slattery,' a Houdini knockoff on the hick theater circuit. You know, escapes from caskets––that sort of stuff. He's had a good life. He's too old to spend it anyway."

Trixie's long, tapered legs propelled her off the canvas camp stool. "Whattaya want me to do?" she said, a skeptical frown on her face.

Magnuson decided to leave nothing to Trixie's twenty-second attention span. He took out a pencil and paper and began to sketch. Finished, he stuck the drawing under her pug nose. "Not exactly rocket science," he explained, tracing his finger on the drawing, which showed the carnival's popular baseball dunking game, complete with a large tank of water eight feet deep.

"When the carousel trade drops off in the evening, Drummer picks up extra cash," Magnuson went on, "doublin' as the patsy in the dunk seat. There's a potful of hotshot pitchers linin' up to burn a bundle tryin' to hit the right spot on the target. A lucky pitch and Drummer drops in the drink. Kerplash! And everybody has a big laugh, okay?"

"Yeah, but you don't know the rest. I didn't draw the whole plan. So listen real close. One of the times he falls in the water, he don't come up. ‘Cause I'll be down there, in my breathin' mask and all. I grab him by the ankles. Hold him down three or four minutes. Bingo! He's history. I'll force his foot under a tank support, which I've checked out. Make it look like an accident. Now for your part."

"Okay, you're gonna fake out the crowd while I sneak out the part of the tank hidden by that dunkin' stage, " Magnuson said. "It's a cinch. See, a yokel gets a lucky hit. Down drops Drummer. You wait four minutes. Then you run to the dunkin' spot and yell out that the game's gone wrong. You're good at yellin'. The suckers will crowd around you, maybe tryin' to help, or more'n likely just tryin' to see what a drowned man looks like."

"Human nature. Trust me. I know carney crowds. In the confusion, I exit the tank behind the dunkin' platform. Nobody will spot me. But so what if somebody does––I've got the mask on and an escape route laid out."

"I trash the breathin' stuff, grab the stash from his room and meet you in front of the House of Horrors. And it's goodbye carney, hello Caribbean."

Before the dunking game opened the next afternoon, Magnuson, furtively donning underwater gear, slipped into the tank. Baseball showoffs began idling around the ticket booth a few minutes before 6 o'clock. That's when Otto Drummer, sporting a clown's red fright wig, a tennis-ball red nose and a painted crescent-moon smile, his usual dunking outfit, made his extracurricular appearance.

Drummer pulled himself into the dunking chair, perched over a large black-and-white target. "Okay," he goaded. "Which one of you spaghetti arms thinks he can give me a Saturday night bath?"

A bruiser with a ropy arm picked up the first of his three-for-five-dollar balls. He wound up, eyeing the girl at his side, and sizzled the sphere. A miss.

The windup. The pitch. The third ball zipped off the red-faced player's fingertips. Whap! It hit the bulls eye. Drummer's mouth flew open in mock fear as he plunged into the water and sank.

Onlookers milled around waiting to see the sputtering fall guy surface. A minute went by. Then two. No Drummer. Nervous crowd chuckling. Trixie edged along the tank, counting off seconds that seemed like hours. At plus three and a half minutes, she followed Magnuson's instructions and screamed, "Something's gone wrong. Somebody get help!" Then she slipped away from the center of the carnival crowd.

Magnuson slithered undetected from the protective cover of the dunking platform apparatus and peeled off the mask and oxygen tank. Hurrying toward Drummer's quarters, he paused to hide the gear A carnival worker ambled by and Magnuson had to delay his hiding move. This is wasting time, he thought, so he quickly lifted up he canvas apron of the Goldfish Ring Toss and slid the stuff out of sight. He ducked behind a larger poster and jumped into jeans and a plaid shirt hidden there earlier.

Minutes later, Magnuson turned the knob on the door to Drummer's cramped quarters. It was unlocked. "He's dumber than I thought," Magnuson mumbled as he opened the door, then shut it.

Finding the cash box would be a cinch, Magnuson figured, groping under the foot of the mattress in the dim light. There it was. He quickly pulled the box out. Suddenly, he leaped backwards in fright. A voice in the shadows said, "What held you up?"

Magnuson peered through the gloom. His startled eyes saw a sodden hank of red hair, cascading over a bulbous red nose. The painted smile drooped upside down, an eerie scowl. The

The hand of the dripping figure, seated, held a revolver. Magnuson realized with a cold chill that it was pointed at him. "Otto, I heard about what happened. I came on the double to protect your stuff from the jackals around here."

"Why, your hair's all wet, Olaf. You'll catch your death," Drummer snickered, breathing all to easily for a drowned man. "I'll be calling the cops in a minute. But first, you oughta know how your lamebrain plot deep-sixed itself.

"It wasn't all that bad for a carney lunkhead, but you overlooked one detail––"

"As I was about to say, you forgot my stint with ‘Slippery Slick Slattery.' Years ago I picked up some tricks on underwater breath-holding. I only went limp to fool you. Then I was right behind you out of the tank. The crowd was all trying to see down in the water, but it was too murky. You screwed around with that breathing junk and getting into street clothes too long.

Behind the standing Magnuson, the door swung open and Trixie's high-pitched voice split the air. "What's takin' you so long?" she demanded. Drummer dropped his guard at the noise, giving Magnuson a chance to make a move. But Magnuson's forward motion only made him an easier target. "Bulls eye!" Drummer crowed, as the bullet tore through Magnuson's chest, leaving a warm corona of blood. He relaxed his grip on the gun. "The second one tonight." Magnuson hit the floor like a sack of Idaho Golds.

Trixie screamed, grabbed the fallen cash box, turned and fled into the carnival's thousand lights, flailing and stumbling through the jumble of ropes and wires. The Midway's discordant music blasted in her ears. She was abreast of the Octopus and its fast-whirling arms when a tent peg caught her left foot. Pitching forward, she fell across the ride's rinky-dink fence, her upper body draped squarely in the trajectory of the metal beast's furiously descending arm.

"What did you see and what did you hear?" the investigating cop asked a farmer in Big Boy coveralls. The farmer said, "What I saw was her trip and get smashed by the Octopus. All them Lincolns and Jeffersons flew up in the air, then hit the ground. Crowd jumped on the free money like crows on a cornfield. What did I hear? Only them screamin' kids."