Willa Platt was perched on a stool in a diner near the Redondo Beach pier, trying to make a cup of bad coffee last long enough for her to finish perusing the Help Wanted listings in the newspaper, when she got distracted by the story of the robot that had murdered its inventor.
She started reading out of curiosity but when she got to the last two paragraphs she could hardly believe her eyes.
. . . While in town, Dr. Pickwell was staying at the Hidden Beach Inn on Ocean View Lane. The establishment, now owned by Miss Amalie Vaughn, is well-known to residents of Burning Cove as the scene of a recent, mysterious tragedy.
Not long ago, Madam Zolanda, the celebrity known as the Psychic to the Stars, leaped to her death from the roof of the mansion. This event occurred hours after the psychic had predicted death onstage at the very same theater, the Palace, where Pickwell was giving the demonstration when he was murdered by the robot . . .
Willa folded the paper and got to her feet. The Abbotsville disaster had been the final straw for the Ramsey Circus. Already teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, the show had collapsed a few weeks later. It could not survive without its star attraction, the Flying Princess. In the wake of the mysterious death of the rigger, the rumors that had circulated through the circus world had crushed any hope that Amalie Vaughn could continue to perform. After Abbotsville, no aerialist would work with her.
By rights, Amalie Vaughn should have been living in some decrepit boardinghouse trying to eke out a living as a lunch-counter waitress. Like me, Willa thought. Instead, the Flying Princess was living in a posh seaside resort town and running her own business.
While I sit here drinking rotgut coffee and trying to land another job.
Willa opened her purse and took out her wallet. She had just enough money for a train ticket to Burning Cove. When you were down on your luck, you turned to family. They had to take you in.