by Jess Lourey
By the time I returned to the Dairy Barn, I was down to one deep-fried Nut Goodie—I figured it would be a waste of perfectly good grease to eat mine cold—which I handed to a grateful Brittany as she materialized from behind the blue curtain.
“Man, thanks! I’m starving. All that butter in there just makes me think of pancakes.” She didn’t ask in her high-pitched voice what kind of food was under all that powdered sugar and batter that I’d handed her, instead digging right in. I admired an adventuresome eater, and as I watched her chew, I guessed she was the only Milkfed Mary who was truly milkfed. She was 5'6", probably 145 pounds, which was healthy and average by normal standards, but on the outside range of acceptable in the beauty pageant industry.
Like most people who didn’t waste time starving themselves, Brittany was good-natured. “Jeez, this is delicious! Is this a candy bar in here? Yum!”
“Not just any candy bar. A Nut Goodie.” It was hard watching someone else eat it, even if I’d just devoured one, and I promised myself I’d have another later to ameliorate the situation. You only live at the State Fair once. “How’d the carving go?”
“See for yourself.” She jabbed a thumb at the slowly rotating booth behind us. Inside now were three butter heads, and only eight unfinished blocks of butter. I recoiled. Since when had I started considering a block of butter to be “unfinished?” Would I start seeing regular butter everywhere as not yet done? This butter is just sticks! I want my money back!
“You look lovely,” I said. “Your butter head and you. The sculptor here is turning out great work.” If you liked generic female faces beneath voluminous yellow hair circa 1970, that is. The sculpting job would probably be a lot easier if the contestants were allowed to have terrible disfigurements, like missing noses or a patch over their eye, so you could easily distinguish one finished product from another. As it was, Lana, Delrita, and Brittany’s pretty heads looked nearly identical to me.
“Yeah, we were kinda bummed it wasn’t Mrs. Gerritt. Everyone wants her to be the one who carves their butter head. But this new lady is nice. She made my teeth really even, hunh?”
Sure enough, when Brittany’s head came around, each of her yellow teeth were perfectly square and aligned, if twice their natural size. It was hard not think of pancakes, chunky golden butter teeth melting off the top of the stack, when looking at them. “Nice. Do you want to sit down and finish that? I wanted to ask you a few questions if you don’t mind.”
Brittany glanced around. I guessed she was searching for Janice Opatz, who was nowhere in sight. Shrugging, she led me outside to a bench with an empty corner.
“Whaddya wanna ask?”
“You know I’m trying to find out what happened to Ashley, right?”
She nodded.
“I’m not having much luck. Have you heard anything?”
She munched thoughtfully. “All of us kinda decided it must be someone from her hometown who did it.” She glanced at me quickly. “No offense. It’s just that none of us knew her long enough to have wanted to kill her, is all.”
“I heard she was pretty snotty.”
Brittany shrugged. “Most of us just got out of high school. We’re used to snotty girls.”
“What about Lana?”
She raised an eyebrow. “How do you mean?”
“I know that Ashley stole Lana’s boyfriend. Wouldn’t that make someone madder than usual?”
Brittany leaned toward me, an earnest expression on her face. “You’d never say that if you really knew Lana. She’s a sweetheart. She’s the one who looks out for all the rest of us. And we all feel so bad for her, you know?”
I shook my head. “I don’t follow.”
“With her mom losing the farm. Mrs. Sorenson’s had a tough go of it ever since Lana’s dad died. That was a couple years before the pageant, I guess, and Lana and her mom did their best, but a few weeks ago they found out the bank is foreclosing on them. They can’t pay their bills. That’s not even the saddest part, though. You should hear Lana talk about her father. She was a total daddy’s girl.First they lost him and now they’re losing the family farm. It’s terrible sad.”
I sat back. This insight into Lana’s dire financial situation was new. I mentally flipped through my encounters of the last week until I recalled my conversation with her. She’d said she had run for the Milkfed Mary title to help out her family. “To get good press,” I think were her exact words. It looked like first runner-up hadn’t been enough of a help.
“You think it’ll make any difference to her family farm now that she’s the official Milkfed Mary?”
“She gets the scholarship now, if that’s what you mean. She didn’t know how she was going to make it to college this fall without that. And she gets ten thousand dollars in cash, but not until she’s successfully completed her reign.”
“Hmm.” I filed that piece of information to examine later and pursued a loose end that had been nagging me since Delrita had hid Dirk and me upstairs. “Who’s got offices up in the dorms, where you guys sleep?”
“Janice has one. The other one belongs to that marketing guy from the cow place.”
“Lars Gunder, from Bovine Productivity Management?”
“Yeah, him. He seems like a nice guy.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Any idea why he’d have an office upstairs, and why Delrita, but not Janice, would have a key to it?”
Her eyes widened. “No. Why?”
I smiled. Her innocence was disarming. “I was hoping you’d know.”
“Unh-unh. I think the pageant’s sponsoring company always gets that office, no matter who they are, but I can’t imagine why Delrita would have a key. That’s weird. Maybe she borrowed it from that Lars guy, or he gave her a spare in case he lost his?”
Her guesses just raised more questions. I was about to ask her who was on deck to get their head carved tomorrow when she leaned forward to set her empty Nut Goodie container on the ground.
As she did, I saw that she had a lock of hair sliced unevenly from the back of her head, exactly where Delrita and Janice had.
Twenty-Eight
“Brittany,” I said, my blood chilled, “do you know you have a snip of hair missing from the back of your head?”
She put up her hand in alarm. “Where?” She began feeling around the back of her layered and curled shoulder-length hair.
I guided her hand to the spot. “Feel that?”
“Oh yeah. Weird.” She teared up. “Does it look horrible?”
“No, it’s not bad. A person wouldn’t notice it unless they were looking for it.” It was the truth. The chunk of hair missing was only two inches long and no wider than a comb. I didn’t see any reason to alarm Brittany by telling her that Delrita and Janice shared the same “mark.” I needed to check the other Milkfed Marys but quick and see if they had a similar hair deficit. “When are you all going to be together again?”
“Who?”
“The Milkfed Marys.”
“Oh. Miss Opatz wants us all there for Megan’s head-carving tomorrow morning for a photo op. Should be fun!”
“Thanks.” I’d check them all first thing tomorrow.
Brittany and I exchanged niceties and then parted ways. She said she had an interview on MPR in an hour to prepare for, and I needed to go to the 4-H and Agriculture-Horticulture buildings to interview the Battle Lakeans there displaying their goods.
It was on the way to the 4-H building that I bumped into Alison Short, my old manager at Perfume River, who was there with a guy about her age who I didn’t recognize. Seeing her familiar face in these surroundings was disorienting, and it took a few seconds to pull up her name, even though we’d worked together for nearly five years. She looked the same—cropped blonde hair, a space between her two front teeth, short and sturdy German build. “Alison!”
“Mira? They let you out of Battle Creek!”
I smiled. “Lake. It’s Battle Lake.”
“Whatever.” She laughed and ga
ve me a hug. “It’s good to see you!”
“You too. I went to the River the other day, but they said you didn’t work there anymore.”
“Yeah, new owners. They told me I could keep working. but only as a waitress. They had family to manage it. I decided to move on. I’m a day manager at the 7 Corners Grandma’s now.”
I knew the restaurant. It was near my old apartment. “How do you like it?”
“It’s fine. The pay is good, and there isn’t much trouble during the day. How about you? Life good up nord, der?” She smiled wickedly, but because she was both funny and kind, her jokes never stung.
“About what you’d expect.” Oh, except for the dead bodies. “I’m working at the library and do some writing for the newspaper. That’s why I’m here. Battle Lake has a lot of local people in the fair, and I’m covering them.”
“Fantastic!” Alison’s friend gave her sleeve a tug, pulling her attention away, and she grimaced. “We need to get going. We’re meeting some friends at the Space Tower. You wanna come with?”
It was tempting, but I had an article to research. Plus, I was still agitated from seeing Brittany’s missing chunk of hair. “I can’t. I have to work.”
“Later then. Lissa is having a party tonight. You remember Lissa? She’s still at the Riverside Plaza, same apartment. You should come!”
Her invitation raised mixed emotions. I liked being invited, but my West Bank life had been characterized by booze and bad choices. Still, seeing old friends might erase the feeling of uprootedness nagging at me since visiting the area on Tuesday. “I’ll see. I’ll try.”
“OK. Great to see you!”
As they walked away, I called the library on a whim. I think I wanted to feel needed. “Battle Lake Pubic Library, Curtis Poling here.”
“Pubic Library?”
“Dammit, where are my glasses! Ida, did you move my spectacles? I can’t read the card here without ’em.”
“Curtis? It’s me, Mira. What card are you reading?”
“Oh, the ladies made a bunch of cards. Said my telephone answering skills were poorly lacking. I have one to read when I answer the phone and then one for each possible question a caller could ask. The damn print is so small, though, that I gotta squint to see what’s written. Ida! Woman! Find me my glasses!”
I held the phone away from my ear while he cooled down. When he’d subsided to angry muttering, I asked him how things were going.
Deep sigh. “When I started, I thought this was an easy job, but I didn’t know there were so many stupid people in the world. You know how many dumb questions I get each day?”
I had a hunch. “Goes with the territory. You all haven’t burned the place down yet, right?”
“Not yet, but if one more person asks me how often the weekly magazines come in, or if I can find them some dang blue book about a bear, or what other names Mark Twain wrote under, I might just try.”
“I’m sorry, Curtis.”
“Not your fault,” he grumbled. “And it’s not all bad. I just like to complain sometimes.” In the background, I heard a chorus of female voices agreeing with him.
“I sure appreciate you helping out,” I said.
“And the whole town appreciates you taking Kennie Rogers off our hands. How’s that working?”
“About like you’d expect, only I think she has a new venture she’ll be bringing back with her.”
“Hold on.” He sounded apprehensive. That was an appropriate reaction.
“Mutton Busting. Turns out she makes a really good clown at a sheep rodeo.”
“She makes a really good clown as a mayor, too. How about Mrs. Berns? You tell her we miss her.”
I smiled. The Senior Sunset folks were a tight-knit bunch. “She’s fine, and I will. So everything’s good back home?”
He was quiet for a moment, and when he did speak, he reminded me why elderly friends are the best friends. “As good as it can be without you here. No one can run the library like you. Whole town misses you.”
My eyes felt surprisingly hot all of a sudden. “Thanks. I’ll talk to you Saturday, when I come back.”
I hung up quick before I started crying. The Ag-Hort building was in sight, and the 4-H building just two blocks on the other side, but I needed to go back to the trailer and grab the notebook I’d forgotten before I conducted my newspaper interviews. I strode with my hands in my shorts pockets and my head down, still feeling warm and fuzzy and a little teary as I pulled into the campgrounds.
I stopped short when my trailer was in sight.
A man was kneeling next to the Airstream, toward the front by the hitch, and even with his back to me it looked like he was searching for something. A cowboy who had dropped his spurs? But this guy was far too spiffy for that, wearing a suit and dress shoes.
When he stood and turned, my heart felt like it had been gripped with icy tongs.
It was Lars Gunder messing with my Airstream, and he had spotted me.
Twenty-Nine
My hackles rose instantly. Something about him gave me the willies, even before he’d stranded me in the hallways of BPM and left me to stumble into that horrible room. It might be his marketing background; I was always suspicious of guys who sold other people’s stuff for a living. It was so parasitical.
My apprehension was connected to more than that, though—more even than the possibility that the USDA had followed up on my call, and had told him I was the one who narced. If we hadn’t made eye contact, I would have snuck away and watched him from a distance.
“Mira! This your trailer?” He stood quickly, slipping something into his jacket pocket. He brushed his hands on his pants and smiled, lighting up his bland face. The sun shone through his thinning hair, exposing his scalp. I wondered why I hadn’t noticed before that he was balding.
I stepped closer, but not too close. “Yep. What’re you doing here?”
He marched over and held out his hand, which I reluctantly and briefly shook. “It’s nice to see you. I hope you don’t mind. The campground director told me which lot you’re staying at.”
“What’re you doing here?” I repeated.
He studied me for a moment and then looked off quickly. “I have something to tell you.” He clenched his hands before shoving them in his pockets, blinking rapidly. He was playing the role of nervous informant perfectly.
His tone of voice and exaggerated nervousness made my bowels feel crunchy. This whole moment was very wrong, and I couldn’t look at him without seeing the dead paws sticking out from the bottom of that pile and hear his scientists talking about ramped-up animal testing.
Two lots over, a couple argued about how much money they had spent at the beer stand. Cries of joy from the Midway echoed around the campground, and the smell of smoky barbeque wafted on the air. There were literally thousands of people around. He couldn’t hurt me here, but everything about him made me want to run.
“Mira.” He stepped in closer, like he wanted to whisper to me. His eyes were glistening brightly. I tried to step back, but my feet were trapped in tar.
“Well hot dog, and I was telling Kennie we should be sorry for you.” Mrs. Berns’ voice carried across the expanse from the entrance of the campground to where Lars and I were standing, dancing too close in the bright day. “Lonely girl on her own at the State Fair, I thought, but here you are making friends and influencing people.”
Lars pulled back, momentarily surprised, and quickly recovered. He threw a dazzling smile at Mrs. Berns. “We were talking shop, I’m afraid. I’m Lars Gunder, marketing director for the Milkfed Mary pageant sponsor. And you are?”
“Hungry.” She turned to me. “You ready to get some chow?”
It took me a beat or two to realize she was deliberately extricating me from a situation that was making me obviously uncomfortable. “Of course.”
“Wait.” Lars held up his hand. “Before you ladies go, let me help you to sleep better.”
“What?” we asked in unison.
“Your trailer.” He nodded at the silver hulk. “It isn’t balanced.”
“I bet Kennie’s end is sagging,” Mrs. Berns grumbled. “Am I right? Is the front lower than the back?”
He chuckled and led us over to the hitch. “See this leveler here? It’s not your front or back that’s uneven. It’s your side. A couple cranks, like so, and you should be all set.” He stepped back. “Check it out. Even steven.”
“Thank you,” I said. The fear I had experienced moments ago felt distant and a little crazy. All the fried food must be clogging my intuition. “Was this what you were going to tell me?”
He nodded without meeting my gaze. “That’s it. I’ll see you around.”
As he walked away, Mrs. Berns leaned into me. “There’s a snake oil salesman if I ever did see one.”
“I think you’re right.” I shivered, shaking the last of his energy off me. “He’s married with two kids, two little girls, anbutd there’s a possibility he was fooling around with Ashley right up until she was murdered.”
“You don’t say,” she said thoughtfully, wrinkling a proud nose that was already wrinkled. Her eyes were as clear as glass. “If you told me he worked at a cyanide factory, I’d say you had your Milkfed Mary killer.”
I crossed my arms and watched his back disappear into the crowd. “If only it were that simple. It could just as easily be a hundred other people. Take Kate Lewis, State Fair Corporation president, suspected embezzler, and likely releaser of wild bulls. Killing Ashley would bring the media spotlight to the fair and dig her out of her financial hole. She seems too nice, though.”
Mrs. Berns crossed her arms. “Nice people murder too. Anyone with enough reason could be a killer.”
“When’d you get so wise on murderers?”
“You been around as long as me, you pick up on stuff. Speaking of Kate Lewis, I met one of her employees at the Mutton Busting last night. The employee’s a rider, semipro. I got to talking to her, and it turns out she’s a receptionist at the offices here. Why don’t we go ask her what she knows about her boss?”