September Fair (26 page)

The smell woke me.
It was an overwhelming stench, like pounds of festering hamburger rotting in a swamp. The feculent odor was so strong it thickened the air, making it difficult to breathe.

My awareness shifted from my nose to my body. I was slumped on a lumpy pile, my arms and legs hanging lower than my torso, and the mass beneath me felt like fur over cold rocks. I shifted, and my hand slid into an opening in the pile. I sensed wetness. I opened one eye and then the other. The room was dim, and I couldn’t make out dimensions. A light shifted in the far corner, and I heard the rumble of large equipment starting up, followed by a wash of fresh air.

An enormous door slid open, and the glow of the moon spilled into the space, illuminating the mound of dead dogs, cats, and cows that I had been tossed onto. I recoiled, which upset my balance, sending me toppling to the base of the corpse mountain. I screamed, but it came out as a choked gurgle. I scratched at my arms and legs, trying to wipe the sensation of cold death off my skin.

A bulldozer lumbered through the door. Lars, steering the machine, glanced over at the corpse pile, looking suddenly alarmed. He switched off the hulking bulldozer, jumped to the ground, and sprinted toward the pile, not relaxing until he caught sight of me shivering at the base of the dead animals. My arms and legs were covered in welts from my scratching, but I still felt infected with death. I couldn’t shake the coldness of the animal corpses pressed against my flesh.

From the side of the pile, thirty feet between us, Lars stared at me as dispassionately as if I were a bug under glass. “Woke up a little early, eh? You probably want to be asleep for this. See, any animals that don’t make it, we house them out here in the testing lab. Once the pile gets big enough, we load them up and bring them to the grinder where they’re turned into cow feed. Used to be we made dog food with this offal too, but people are particular about what goes into their pets. What goes into their own food, that’s a whole different story.” He laughed, a thick and murky sound.

I stared crazily around the testing lab. It was about three hundred square feet and built like a bunker. The garage door Lars had opened to drive the bulldozer into was the only visible exit. I’d have to get past him to escape, and then what? I was in an industrial park in the middle of nowhere. “I saw the dead animals in the plant. You had a whole pile in there.”

“I know you did. I watched the videotape. I have to tell you as a point of pride that we don’t usually leave animal carcasses lying around our front offices. We run a very clean operation, but needed to make an exception and ramp up the testing, using all available space. You see, we need to find a way to fool the USDA. They’re inspecting the plant next week. Seems people have been spreading vicious rumors about our products, enough so that the government felt they needed to get involved.” He reached into his pocket for the same bottle of liquid he’d had at the haunted house.

“But on to more pressing issues. You, and how you’ll die.” He sized up the distance between us. He could be on me in ten strides. “I’m not a monster. I’ll give you a choice. Either you go into the grinder awake and tied up, or you let me put you out again. That way, you won’t feel a thing as you take your place in the circle of life.” He started humming the Disney song.

I gagged. My chest felt ready to explode with fear, but I was trapped in a corner of the gigantic lab. The garage door stood to my left and behind Lars, the ten-foot-high pile of animal corpses lay in front of me, and the dark, uncharted expanse of the lab loomed to my right. The viscous stench of death made it difficult to concentrate. Scooting back several inches, my back hit the wall, which I used to leverage myself into a standing position. My legs were shaky from the knockout agent, but my wits were returning. “You killed Mrs. Berns?”

“I’m afraid she hit her head pretty hard. A woman that age isn’t likely to survive a fall like that.”

A sob escaped my throat. “And Aeon?”

“Look to your right.”

I peered around the side of the pile, keeping one eye on Lars. I saw in the shadows a bundle of clothes and skin that were Aeon. His body was twisted in an unnatural angle. “He’s dead.”

“Not yet.” He smiled the empty grin of a jack-o-lantern. “It was easy carrying you out of the fair and into my waiting van. Turns out people think it’s funny when you tell them your girlfriend had too much to drink. I had to be a little trickier with Aeon, though. I lured him to the van by telling him that you needed him. When he got there and saw you out cold, he put up a little fight, but I zapped him with a stun gun before putting him out. He’ll be much easier to get in the grinder than you. That’s what you get for trying too hard. Now what’ll it be? Awake and ground up, or unconscious and ground up?”

He snaked toward me, eating up the distance separating us in seconds. I stumbled backward and toward Aeon’s body, keeping the pile of dead animals between me and Lars. “If you don’t stand still right now, I’ll retract my offer. You’ll go into the grinder awake.” His voice was smooth and crazy.

My heart beat like a machine gun, and I thought I’d collapse from fear. The smell of death was suffocating. I had only one chance to escape, but it meant letting Lars put his murderous hands on me. “People will hear me scream.”

“Not out here,” he said with certainty.

I moved and Lars followed. I struggled to keep the pile between us as I positioned myself nearer Aeon. When I was by my destination, I let Lars close the gap a little, but he moved too quickly. I wasn’t in the right spot. I needed three more inches but there wasn’t time. Lars lunged. I jumped back, twisting as I fell. I landed full force, face-down on Aeon’s body. He didn’t make a sound, not even a whisper of air escaping. His body felt as cold as the animals.

“That’s better.” His hands coiled into my hair, caressing my neck and tugging at the sore spot he had created when he’d yanked out my hair at the haunted house. He leaned forward, murmuring. “Such a shame so many beautiful girls have to die for progress, but ME is just too important. Think about how many more starving people we can feed if we can keep the milk enhancer on the market. You’re sacrificing yourself for a good cause.”

Lars jerked me up harshly by my hair, and as he did, I turned and plunged the Swiss army knife I had snatched from Aeon’s pocket deep into his stomach and twisted it, using my last burst of strength. I retched at the gristly sound of the blade separating organs and intestines, but the knife had become an extension of my arm, and I couldn’t let it go, couldn’t stop it from slicing side to side.

Lars gurgled and pushed me away. He fell toward the wall, covering his leaking belly with both hands. “You bitch!”

I couldn’t help Aeon, not right now. I sprinted past Lars, knocking him over as I ran out of the testing lab to the nearest security gate. I looked wildly around the courtyard, not sure if Lars was working alone. At the gate, I plunged the bloodied knife into the keypad, wiggling and jamming it until I triggered the security system. Klieg lights immediately flashed all over the grounds, lighting the place up like the Fourth of July, and an alarm sounded inside the building and blared from bullhorns set along the top of the razor wire fence. I prayed that a sister alarm was going off at the St. Paul police station.

“So he killed Ashley
because he didn’t want the world to know that Milk Enhancer made man boobs?”

“More or less.” I was helping to dress Mrs. Berns’ wound. She’d been given five stitches, some pain killers (“Finally! A
legal
prescription,” she’d said), and sent on her way. The doctor had ordered her to keep the stitches covered for a few days, but Mrs. Berns wasn’t on board. She said she wouldn’t be able to get the attention she’d earned if people couldn’t see the extent of her injuries. We compromised, with her allowing me to put gauze over the stitches as long as I didn’t cover any of the bruising. “He thought Ashley had stolen the report from his office after their last tryst. If the report’s contents were leaked, his career and BPM were both dust. She’d been blackmailing him before that, saying she’d come out about the affair if he didn’t leave his wife. He figured he’d kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.”

“What an asshole.” Mrs. Berns had always been the queen of understatement. “He deserved to get stabbed in the stomach.”

I winced. The memory of plunging the knife into his belly sickened me. The police had arrived within minutes of the alarm going off at BPM and called an ambulance when they saw me covered in blood. It was all Lars’. He was conscious when they took him away, but incoherent. Aeon was still out, but the EMTs had assured me all his vital signs were fine. After several hours of questioning, I was sent back to my trailer, but Chief Kramer had told me I better not go far. There would be a court date in my future, testifying against Lars. “He’s looking at life in prison. The fact that he recently acquired breasts from drinking copious amounts of ME-laced milk won’t do him any favors there. Apparently, he’d been taping them down for a little while now, but they’re there. I saw them when he attacked me.”

She snorted with laughter, forgetting that sudden movements gave her a headache. At her grimace of pain, I apologized for her injury for the ten-millionth time. “For the love of Pete, would you just let it go? There’s nothing to forgive. We’re all responsible for ourselves. You can’t save another person from their fate, and so we all just do the best we can. And that’s enough.”

I teared up as hundreds of tiny weights took off to greener pastures, thanks to Mrs. Berns’ grace. Was that all I’d needed to hear, all this time? “I love you.”

“You better,” she grumbled, taking a deep pull off the hot fudge malt I’d bought her for breakfast. She’d been milking our sympathy for all she could. I’d even overheard her get Kennie to agree to creating a lieutenant mayor of Battle Lake position. “I can’t believe you were right about the cyanide in the ice cubes.”

“That was just a lucky guess. No one thought anything of Lars being upstairs while the Milkfed Marys scurried around to get ready for Ashley’s butter carving. After all, he had an office up there and was in and out all the time, and the place was highly trafficked that morning. When he slipped Ashley a glass of ice laced with cyanide, she didn’t draw any attention to it, thinking it was one more of the secret little favors he’d been doing for her since they’d started sleeping together.”

Mrs. Berns tsked. “How’d Carlotta take the news about her girl?”

“About like you’d figure. She was relieved to know who killed her daughter and why, but that doesn’t bring her back.”

“That poor woman. Just goes to show you can do your best with your kids, but you can’t predict how they’ll turn out.”

I nodded agreeably. I had a quarter-sized chunk of scalp missing, a black eye that I must have acquired while unconscious, bruised wrists from Lars manhandling me in the haunted house, a small puncture wound at the base of my spine, and a chloroform hangover, but it was a lot better than being dead. “The best news is that Aeon is going to be okay. He has a broken arm from scuffling with Lars, but he’ll recover. I think seeing all those dead animals at BPM has reenergized him and his cause.”

“So he was at the State Fair expressly to blow the whistle on Bovine Productivity Management?”

“Yep.” I gingerly rubbed at my black and blue wrists. “He planned on breaking into Lars’ office all along, and if he didn’t find anything there, he was going to hit BPM. It was just luck that Christine practically handed the ME report to him. By the way, I’m pretty sure Janice is going to continue on as chaperone of the pageant. I sent an e-mail this morning tipping off the Midwest Milk Organization about her little hair fetish, but I think crazy goes with the job description. Who else’ll they find to do her job?”

“And Kate? Who’s going to do her job?”

I stole a sip of Mrs. Berns’ malt under her disapproving gaze. “That’s still up in the air. I called Chaz from the
Pioneer Press
this morning to give him the scoop on Ashley’s murder, and he told me Kate was turning herself in for embezzling, making a plea bargain with the attorney general. She was going to give up her gambling-addicted husband, who apparently did most of the actual book doctoring, in exchange for leniency.”

“Good. I hope she loses that scab. And the bull? Did her husband set that loose, too?”

“Nope, unfortunately that was all Kate. I think she might be angling for an insanity plea if turning her husband in doesn’t work out.”

“Creative woman. Say, I’ve been thinking. Do you suppose the fair’d give me one of those little golf carts to ride around? I got hurt in the line of duty, after all.” She made puppy dog eyes and pointed at her bruises.

“I’m not sure if they’d see it that way, but we could try,” I said, smiling. “You want a piggyback ride in the meanwhile?”

“Pah,” she said, finishing her malt and standing gingerly to strap on her
epée
. “A woman’s got to keep her dignity. Speaking of, there’s supposed to be a new gym opening up in Battle Lake. I’ve heard they’ve got a lady martial arts instructor who’ll teach you how to kick some ass. I think her particular art is called Toe Can Do. Maybe you and me should join, learn how to defend ourselves. What with the way you’re going, that’ll come in handy.”

I nodded in agreement. “I think it’s called Tae Kwon Do, and that’s not a bad idea.”

“That’s what I said. Toe Can Do.”

“Of course.” We stepped out of the trailer and into a beautiful late morning, sunny but with a hint of the crisp fall to come. “What do you think Kennie’s up to?”

Mrs. Berns took a final drag off her malt before tossing it in a nearby garbage. “I think we’ll find out in just a few minutes. You look very nice, by the way.”

“Thank you.” I adjusted the headband I had used to cover my missing hair.

We hobbled our way to the Battle Lake booth. It was “I Love The Fair” day, and we were on our way to help Kennie, though she hadn’t yet told us what the booth consisted of. Today was also the day Johnny was supposed to show up, and I was embarrassed to admit how much I was looking forward to seeing him. I had e-mailed him early this morning to fill him in on Ashley’s murder and Lars’ capture, but I didn’t know if he’d receive the message before getting on the road. I was profoundly rattled from the events of the previous night, taking care of Mrs. Berns so I didn’t have to think about me, and I just wanted to lean against someone for a while. Mrs. Berns and Kennie were a good start, but they didn’t offer the same benefits as Johnny.

“This might be the busiest day yet at the fair.” We passed through the crowds, people generously making room for our bruised bodies, and came in sight of the International Bazaar. “And Oh My God.”

Our jaws hung open when we caught sight of the stall. Kennie had snagged space in the far west corner of the International Bazaar, though her theme was more Minnesotan Bizarre. She had taken over a Moroccan booth for a day, and their colored scarves and hookas had been moved to the side to make room for her cardboard hearts and plywood lips. The top of the booth was emblazoned with a sign in all shades of red: “Save Our Liquor, Get a Pucker: One Kiss for $5.”

“About time you two showed up. I can’t run this booth all by myself!”

Mrs. Berns and I looked at each other and then back at Kennie. “A kissing booth?” I asked.

“And no one’s exactly beating down your door to buy what you’re selling,” Mrs. Berns said, scanning the vicinity. “Think maybe the cupid costume was too much?”

Kennie looked down at her white corset, black fishnet stockings, and fire-engine red vinyl platforms. On her back she wore fuzzy white wings, and a camo bow and arrow hung over one shoulder. I had no doubt she could use it, if not to make someone fall in love with her at least to wound him until she could close in. “It’s all in the spirit of the event. And the booth doesn’t officially open until noon, so get your rears back here.”

“I’m not kissing strangers,” I said. “Think of all the diseases we could catch.”

Kennie held up cardboard smiles taped to popsicle sticks. “That’s why I have these here lip prophylactics. Hold them over your actual lips when you kiss. Too bad I didn’t have time to get full face masks. You two are as ugly as butts with all those stitches and purple bruises.”

“A few war wounds can’t hide my natural charm.” Mrs. Berns cackled and rubbed her hands together. “I think you’ve finally got something here, Mayor. I’m in.” She propelled me into the booth ahead of her, up to the front counter, and put a set of lips-on-a-stick into my hand. “Let’s save that liquor store!”

I turned away from the counter to face them, holding up the prophylactic lips to illustrate how stupid they looked. “You really expect me to do this all day just to raise money for liquor?”

Instead of answering me, they both looked over my shoulder, and their eyes widened before a smirk settled on their lips. “Maybe not
all
day,” Kennie murmured, in a rare display of subtlety.

I turned. Johnny Leeson was standing there, the sun glowing behind him and outlining the beautiful curl of his hair, the strong slope of his shoulders, the gorgeous line of his tanned arms, naked below the short sleeves of his crisp white T-shirt. His Levis were slung low on his hips, but I didn’t have too much time to concentrate on that because he was looking at me with the most peculiar expression in his eyes. It made me feel vulnerable and like I was being held at the same time. My heart pump-pumped a salsa beat.

Leaning forward, Johnny lightly traced the outline of my cheek, a flash of anger crossing his face as his finger circled the bruise surrounding my eye. “I got your e-mail.”

He gently pulled down the hand I was using to hold the prophylactic lips to my face. With his other hand, he pulled me toward him, over the counter. His lips met mine in a sweet explosion that sent shivers all over my body. Up close, he smelled like cinnamon and fresh air. He caressed my back with his fingers as we kissed, gently touching the edges of the bandage there, and his strong hands were everything I had dreamed. He pulled back, too soon, and rested his forehead on mine, his hands still softly holding my face.

“How much do I owe you?” I sighed.