August Moon

by Jess Lourey

  My hands shook in anger laced with fear, both emotions amplified by the tragedy of this morning. How dare the Meales try to tell people what books they could and couldn’t read, and turn librarians into censors! Could they force me to take down the banned book display? Without a generous endowment from Tom Everts, who owned the lumber store and several other businesses when he was alive, this library never could have been built, but we counted on state funding for day-to-day operations. Well-stocked libraries with decent hours were an endangered species in today’s political climate. Was I about to get the library in big trouble? “Can I keep this?”

  “It’s all yours, darlin.’ ”

  I folded the petition carefully, pushing my finger tightly along the creases. My voice cracked as I asked my next question. I knew it was Lucy in that ditch, but I couldn’t bear to say her name out loud. “What do you know about the dead girl in Clitherall?”

  Kennie drew up tall, making a squeak-whoof sound that I prayed was only leather on leather. “How do you know about that?”

  “A little birdie told me.” I don’t know why I said that. I hated that phrase.

  “Since Gary has found God, it takes a little longer for me to get my information, but you’re gonna find out soon enough. She was that girl you had working here part-time. A real sweetie by all accounts, about to start her senior year. Lucy Lebowski. She had been missing since cheerleading camp the night before.”

  “Do they know who killed her?”

  “They’re interviewing her coach, the girls who saw her last, but they don’t have anything solid right now. Why? You gonna solve another murder?”

  I was suddenly reluctant to tell Kennie I was moving and so wouldn’t be around long enough. “Not if I can help it.”

  “Whatever. Be sure to stop by my house later. I have a new business proposition for you.”

  I nodded absently. When she left, I went online, feeling jittery and insignificant. I needed to erase the picture of Lucy’s corpse from my mind, and I wanted to distract myself from the dangerous and irrational anger I was feeling toward the Meales’ petition. Sure, the petition sucked, but I knew if it wasn’t for the stress of Lucy’s murder, I would be able to put it in perspective.

  I had to stay in the library, so to get my mind off things, I settled for researching a passive-aggressive, anti-church recipe for the column the week after next—Devil’s Food Cupcakes with Sinfully Rich Frosting. It was aimed specifically at those who believed I was promoting “Godless literature.” I typed up the recipe and sent it off to Ron, who would probably pop a zipper when he realized I was turning something in before deadline.

  As I clicked the “Send” button, I thought about my teen years, something I had been doing a lot this month. My last up-close and personal encounter with organized religion had happened in high school. My mom had turned to the church, as many women in abusive relationships do, and been advised to stick it out for the betterment of her family, as many women in abusive relationships are. I was certain that if her minister hadn’t told her that her marriage was a test of her strength and faith, she would have left my dad. Probably he still would have died a stupid death, but it wouldn’t have been so heart-wrenching and immediate to me. I wouldn’t have been forced to walk past that stinking car every school day for two years, wouldn’t need to wonder what people were whispering about when I walked by. But my mom was urged to keep her family intact—told, in fact, that that was what God wanted. A worse plan I’ve never seen executed. That was enough religion for a lifetime for this girl.

  I was relieved when the front door opened. I looked up, hoping to see Sarah Ruth early for her shift. I could tell her about Lucy and maybe share the burden, and come up with a battle plan to deal with the petition. Instead, in walked a man in a cape.

  In this life, there are some things you can be sure of. One of them is that a man wearing a cape in Minnesota in August wants you to ask him some questions.

  “Hello?”

  He walked toward me, his hand outstretched. Except for the slick black cape, which was more of a capelet, I amended, he was average looking. Tall, maybe 6'4", with the awkward body of a man whose bones have grown faster than his muscles. His dark hair was mussed and hanging over his tiny, round John Lennon glasses. He grinned at me lopsidedly, making his unremarkable nose tug up over the left nostril. “I’m Weston Lippmann.”

  We looked to be about the same age, so I dropped the formalities. “Hi, Weston. I’m Mira. New in town?”

  “Pleased to meet you.” I thought I detected a soft, Southern accent, a natural one Kennie would kill for. “I’m new to town, but I’m not going to be in town. Not for very long. I’m a researcher around for a few weeks, and I was hoping you could point me in the right direction.”

  My curiosity was piqued. “What are you researching?”

  “Wood ticks. I’m the curator of the United States National Tick Collection, which is currently housed at Georgia Southern University.”

  Like that, my curiosity deflated. “The collection travels?”

  “Yes! Just like wood ticks.” He smiled apologetically.

  “Mind if I ask what’s up with the cape?”

  His cheeks reddened. “A personal eccentricity. I’m not fond of birds. They have a bothersome habit of, um, dropping on me. If I’m going to spend a lot of time outdoors, it makes more sense to wear this so I can wipe off any leavings.”

  “No way! Birds don’t like me either!” It’s embarrassingly relieving when you find you share a neurosis with another person.

  “Really?” He wasn’t sure if I was teasing him or not.

  “Totally, yeah! I think it’s because I accidentally killed one when I was a little girl. I found a nest, transplanted it to my sock drawer, and forgot about it. Ever since then, birds lunge at and generally harass me. People think I’m weird.”

  His eyes glowed as we bonded over our shared peculiarities, two lone geeks at the prom comparing pocket protectors. “Me too.”

  There was an awkward silence, which I rushed in to fill. “So, you ran outta ticks in Georgia to study?”

  He made a funny, throat-clearing noise. “Right now we’ve got more than 123,000 ticks in our museum, but I had some vacation coming up, so I figured I’d head north. I’m looking for information on a new breed of deer tick reported in West-central Minnesota.”

  “That’s a vacation?”

  “Well, I don’t normally do field work. Not anymore. But I love it, and I have some family not far from here, so I thought I’d combine work and pleasure.”

  “Hmm. Well, good luck with that. What do you want to find out here? In the library, I mean.”

  “Do you have any locally published history? Farmer’s journals, business ledgers, and the like?”

  “Most of that you can find at the Otter Tail County Historical Society in Fergus Falls, about twenty miles up 210. I do have a copy of After the Battle, though. It’s a pretty interesting history of Battle Lake, put together by the Centennial Committee when the town turned 100.”

  “Perfect!”

  I directed him to the spiral-bound book in the reference section in the rear of the library and returned to find Sarah Ruth settled behind the front counter. “I didn’t even hear the front door open!”

  She smiled sadly, looking a little ashen. “All librarians are quiet. Who’ve you got in back?”

  “Just a guy in a cape. Pay him no mind.”

  “Whatever you say.” Her acceptance of the eccentricities this town swept across her path amazed me. She twisted her crucifix necklace around her finger, and her mood deepened. “Did you hear about poor Lucy? Shot and left for dead in a ditch in Clitherall this morning.”

  “She wasn’t shot in the ditch.”

  “What?”

  I didn’t realize I had said it out loud, or that I had even been conscious of that detail, until I heard my own voice. “She was lying in a ditch, sure enough, right in the Clitherall Carwash, but there was no blood splattered near
her. I don’t know a lot about guns, but I do know you can’t shoot someone in the back without leaving a pretty gory mess. Whoever murdered her did it before they tossed her into that ditch.”

  Sarah Ruth hurried over and threw an arm around me. “Oh, you poor thing! You actually saw that horrible scene?”

  Weston reappeared. “Oh! I’m sorry.” He pushed his glasses up his nose with his pointer finger and looked from Sarah Ruth to me, obviously uncomfortable. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I, it’s just that, is there any chance I can check this out?” He held up a red, white, and blue copy of After the Battle.

  I stepped away from Sarah Ruth and sucked a deep breath, all business. “No, but the newspaper sells them. I think they’re twenty dollars a copy.”

  “The Battle Lake Recall, right? Where’s their office?”

  “Right next to the post office. Go left out of here on Lake Street and you can’t miss it—right across the street from the Village Apothecary.”

  “Would they also have information on any sort of community gatherings, sports events in the summer, that sort of thing?”

  “I suppose.”

  He flicked his cape at me and smiled shyly. “Thanks, Mira. I hope to see you again.”

  “Watch out for the flying lizards.”

  “You know it.”

  When he left, I didn’t know what to say to Sarah Ruth. Her hug had thrown me off, so I returned to familiar territory—righteous anger. The banned book display petition reasserted itself at the forefront of my mind. “Do you know about the new ministry over at the New Millennium Bible Camp in Clitherall?”

  She smiled distantly. “Yes. I went to services there last week. It’s right up the road from where I’m staying.”

  “Really?” I wanted her to be as upset as I was. I was pretty sure she hadn’t recently been stood up and ditched across state lines by a very hot landscaper, gotten skunk drunk with a zaftig woman in bike shorts, or seen a young and sweet, tragically murdered cheerleader, but I knew there was one knob I could twist to get her tweaked. “Did you know those crazies are sending a petition around town to shut us down?”

  “Shut down the library?”

  “Well, at least shut down our banned book display. Who are they to say which books people can and can’t read?”

  “Are you sure you have that right? The Meales seem like nice people, very supportive when I told them I was a librarian.”

  I grimaced. “Next time you’re at one of their services, would you mind letting it drop that we’re not the enemy here at the library?”

  “Of course.”

  I wish that I could have left it at that, but patience was not a virtue I possessed. It was time to crank up the Pat Benatar, dig out the glitter eye shadow, and come out swinging. I had just the plan to restore a little justice to the world, and tomorrow afternoon would be the perfect time to put it into play.

  The next day at the library, a Wednesday, couldn’t pass fast enough. When I wasn’t able to stand it any longer, I gave Sarah Ruth the keys and asked if she would mind closing up for me. I had one final obligation to fulfill before I could slip undercover. I had promised Tina I’d stop by her store and see what I could find out about Lydia, the employee I hadn’t met yet. It’d also give me a chance to see if I could find any more out about Annika, the suspicious worker. I would much rather be putting my excellent plan into play, but I had given Tina my word.

  When I stepped out of the library, the hazy hot air was as heavy as a hand pushing down on me. Everyone around me was wilting and hugging the sparse shade under business awnings. Across the street, a gaggle of children held rapidly melting popsicles, grape and orange sticky-juice running down their arms. If we didn’t get relief from this weather soon, the lakes were going to be full of boiled fish.

  I spotted Annika before I entered 4Ts. She was in the front display window rearranging some walleye, wood ducks, and beaded earrings. I waved as I entered.

  “Nice day to get in from the heat!”

  She smiled. “Can you hold this bird for me for a minute? I need to dust these bracelets up front and I can’t get to them with this plume in my way.”

  She passed me a stuffed duck, its glass eyes sparkling. If it weren’t for Tina, I would have spit once on the ground for good luck and scrambled out the door. “Sure.” I put my hands out and cringed, certain that the birds would smell their dead comrade on me and seek revenge as soon as I left the store. I held the bread-loaf-sized corpse gingerly, surprised at the silky softness of the feathers and how little it weighed. It had a strange airiness, a cold dead husk of a thing, and it emitted a faint-rotten chemical odor. “Ever think it’s weird to have jewelry and stuffed animals together in one store?”

  She shrugged. “It works. Speaking of, how do you like that yin-yang ring?”

  “You’ve got a good memory.”

  “Just for jewelry. I love it. See this aquamarine pendant?” She leaned toward me so I could get a view of the big blue sparkler around her neck. “Just got it. It’s rare to find an aquamarine this size.”

  “They must pay you well.” I tried to make my smile easy, but I was a terrible actor, and the bird carcass in my arms made it all that much more difficult to feign cheerfulness. Her eyes turned hard, and she snatched the duck out of my hands and turned away.

  “I’m good with money,” she said, her back to me.

  I’ll bet she was. I had a hunch that Tina was right and Annika was supplementing her income on the sly. A hunch was just gossip all dressed up and ready to go out, though, and I had told Tina I wouldn’t report anything that wasn’t concrete. I decided to fish in a different pond. “You know that Lebowski girl? The one who was murdered?”

  That brought immediate camaraderie, as death does, and Annika and I were friends again. She turned to me, her eyes wide. “Isn’t that awful? She worked at the library with you, didn’t she?”

  I nodded, my lips pursed.

  “That must suck. My friend Sally’s boyfriend Rick had just seen her at a party the night before.”

  I wasn’t surprised. Like most teenagers in a small town, Lucy liked to drink with her friends. There wasn’t much else to do at night, and given the number of bars in each town, teens certainly saw the behavior modeled often enough. I had nothing to lose by leading Annika along, however. “Yeah? Did she go to a lot of parties?”

  “For sure. She was a total Frito Lay.”

  “Hunh?”

  “Easy. She was easy. And she liked to whoop it up on the weekends.”

  I withheld judgment. If being a partier was a capital crime, there’d be no cheerleaders left in rural Minnesota. Come to think of it, there wouldn’t be much of anyone left. Just the kids and people in full-body casts. Plus, I knew firsthand Lucy was a sweet person, regardless of what she did in her off time. “More than the usual?”

  “Depends on who you ask.” She tensed a little, maybe sensing I wasn’t jumping on board the “blame the dead girl” train quickly enough. “Why do you want to know?”

  “It’s depressing, you know? She was so young, and now someone killed her. Aren’t you sad?”

  “Well, you know what they say—live hard, die young, and leave a hot corpse. Anyhow, Lydia’s the one you want to ask about Lucy. They were both on the cheerleading squad.”

  Annika returned to her rearranging of the recently departed fauna and gold-plated jewelry, and I considered this piece of information. I was here to help Tina, but would it hurt if I could pick up some information about Lucy’s last night on earth? As her friend and employer, I owed her that much. I moved to the rear of the store, hoping to catch Lydia when she emerged from the “employees only” door. Two couples entered the front and browsed the racks. I inched closer to the rear door and knelt to sift through a basket of bangles. That’s where I picked up on some tense whispering coming from the rear room, and as I stopped making noise with the jewelry, I could make out words.

  “…to steal from us!” It was a woman’s voice.


  “If you thought someone was stealing, you should have gone to the police like I told you. But you know no one’s stealing. Maybe you should lay off the blonde juice a little and learn to count the till better.” This, a man’s voice, condescending and dismissive.

  “I’m not stupid, Tom.” As I inched closer to the door and pretended to study the elastic toe rings on a shelf next to it, I recognized Tina’s voice. “I know how to count a till. Will you please listen to me?”

  He mimicked her in a sing-song voice. “‘Will you please listen to me? Will you please listen to me?’ God! You sound like a spoiled brat. You’re just as bad as those idiot girls you hire.”

  “I’m sorry, Tom. I didn’t mean to make you mad.”

  “‘I didn’t mean to make you mad.’ Maybe you should try sparking that brain before you open your piehole, then.”

  I clenched. I didn’t know Tom Mathison well. He spent most of his time in the back room or working in his shop at home, but when I bumped into him in town, he was always friendly, a broad grin on his ruddy face. He was short and meaty, with hands like baseball gloves, and a habit of slapping you on the back when you talked. I wondered if he also enjoyed slapping his wife as she talked.

  Tina sighed, and it was heartbreaking for its timidity. “I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah, you are. Are we done with this?”

  “I won’t bring it up again.”

  When Tina appeared in front of me seconds later, it was so abrupt that I didn’t have time to pretend I hadn’t been eavesdropping. “Hi.”

  She flushed and studied her shoes. “Sorry if you had to hear that. Things are a little tense around here since the, well, lately.”

  I wanted to make her comfortable. “Must be the weather. It has everyone on edge. Is Lydia here?”

  “She called in sick. She was one of the cheerleaders at camp with poor Lucy Lebowski, you know, and she’s too distraught to come to work today. Anyhow, I guess I don’t need you to help any more. It maybe wasn’t a problem like I thought.”

  I looked toward the front window and was momentarily blinded by the sun reflecting off Annika’s pendant. I wanted to help Tina win back some of her confidence. She was a nice woman in a bad marriage, a terribly common situation I had witnessed firsthand growing up. “I don’t mind.” I lowered my voice. “It’s just between you and me. So when do you think Lydia will be back?”