September Fair (5 page)

“Mira? Is that you?
Ron said you’d be at the fair. He said I should look for you. I just talked to him, to tell him about …” Her voice cracked. Tears rolled down her face, settling in lines that hadn’t been there last time I’d seen her. “I suppose you heard.”

I opened my mouth to reply, but closed it when I spotted the two police officers bringing up the rear. They were followed by the woman in the red power suit whom I had seen trying to calm the sculptor earlier this morning. I moved to stand closer to Mrs. Pederson, hoping the woman wouldn’t recognize me.

While I had never socialized with Mrs. Pederson without her husband or Ron, I felt an immediate connection to her in this moment. Her daughter may have been a snot, but seeing Carlotta’s swollen face was a painful reminder that no one adores you like your mom, and no amount of love was insurance against loss. Those were two lessons that I had paid a dear price to learn last month.

“We’re here so I can point out Ashley’s things. You’ll stay with me, won’t you, honey?” She moved past me as she talked, her voice seeming to come from far away. We didn’t know each other well, but I must have been her only familiar face at the moment and so had become her touchstone in grief.

“Of course.” I followed her into the dormitory. There was no point in asking her how she was doing. She was moving as if her spine had been crushed and she was only staying upright out of habit.

She rambled to the nearest vanity and reached for a hairbrush with an ornate silver handle. She held it toward the sunlight streaming in from the windows, and the light played off the blonde strands captured in the bristles. “I gave Ashley this brush for her first Communion. I used to comb her hair with it before she went to bed. A hundred strokes on each section.” Her voice was eerily detached.

“I’m sorry,” I croaked, feeling her pain despite my best efforts. I knew that level of agony, that bottomless falling, the elevator plummeting to an end that never comes. I had spent part of my childhood and all of my teen years wishing my dad out of my life, and then when he did disappear in a screeching crash of metal, I felt as lonely as an abandoned cardboard box. The scariest part was not the grief but the emptiness left in its wake. I wanted to somehow comfort her, but I was afraid to touch her. She trembled with sadness. It crawled on her skin like bugs, parted her hair, leaked out her ears.

Guilt drove me, though, and I stepped to her and tentatively patted her shoulder. She turned, fell into my arms and sobbed, her disconnection cracking. “She’s dead! My beautiful baby. How could this happen? Why her? Why can’t anyone tell me what happened?”

The uniformed officers shifted their feet uncomfortably behind us. They both looked fresh-scrubbed, maybe five years younger than my thirty. One of them hadn’t been shaving long.

“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Pederson,” I said. “Do you have someone at the fair with you? You shouldn’t be alone at a time like this.”

She clung to me. “My husband is on his way from home. You’ll help me, won’t you, Mira? You’ll help me find out what happened to my baby. Won’t you?” She pulled back and locked eyes with me. Her expression was etched with a wild fierceness, leaving me only one answer.

“Of course I will.”

“Promise me. Promise me you’ll find out what happened to my little girl.”

Those were the words people spoke when unimaginable pain befalls them. They’re crazy words, a kettle hot to bursting letting off necessary steam. Most listeners would write them off to extreme grief. Me, the prisoner of guilt, tattooed them to my heart. “I promise.” And with those two words, my personal vow to avoid all future murder investigations shattered like a mirror.

She let me go and cradled the hairbrush as if it were an infant. “My sweet baby. My poor, poor baby.” With the help of the police officers and the staid but keen-eyed woman I guessed was the Milkfed Mary chaperone, Mrs. Pederson made her way around the dorm, pointing out her daughter’s duffel bag and gowns. Their location and contents were photographed, as was the entire room, from every angle. Mrs. Pederson wasn’t allowed to remove any of her daughter’s belongings. Rather, the police officers collected them with their gloved hands and carried them out, even gently peeling her daughter’s brush from Carlotta’s hands before leading the way down the stairs.

The three of us followed, me with a hand on the shaky Mrs. Pederson. The chaperone trailed at a distance. She had an icy demeanor, but inside she must have felt terrible. Talk about a profoundly bad job looking after someone. “Keep your charges alive” must be the bare minimum requirement on her contract, and this woman had blown it. I couldn’t imagine it was her fault, but that was probably empty solace.

The police officers waited for us at the bottom of the stairs. “Mrs. Pederson, we need to go to the station now.”

“I’ll go with,” I said. In for a penny, in for pound.

“I’m sorry. You can’t ride in the police car.”

I stopped. That meant unhooking Ron’s pick-up truck, my immediate means of transportation, from the Airstream, and I had no idea how to do it. I could figure it out, though, even if it meant reasoning with a crowbar. “Can you give me directions?”

Mrs. Pederson shook her head. “It’s okay, Mira. Gary is meeting me there. You’ve met my husband? He’ll take care of me.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

She squeezed my arm. The fervor that had struck her earlier had dissipated. “Pray for me, Mira. Pray for me and my girl’s soul.”

The police led her away, supporting her as they walked. The chaperone followed for a few feet before turning back to me. There was a pleasant non-expression on her face, but it tightened into something darker when she neared. “You were the girl who tried to get into the booth after Ashley died.”

“Not me.” I met and held her gaze.

She studied me for five difficult seconds, apparently coming to the conclusion that I didn’t abandon my lies easily. She changed tactics. “What were you doing in the dormitory just now?”

Defensive was my normal posture, but my brain was so thoroughly rooted in sympathy that it took me a moment to jump tracks. “I was looking for Mrs. Pederson.” You lie enough, your fibbing muscle becomes as toned as a weight lifter’s bicep.

The chaperone mulled this one. From a distance, one might describe her as attractive in a motherly way, but up close, she had a Nurse Ratched vibe. A lot of that was due to her hair and clothes, which were stiff and perfect, but she also had iron behind her eyes. She unsettled me a little. “How’d you know Mrs. Pederson would be here?”

“I didn’t. I was hoping.” Before she came up with a counter-question, I threw one back at her. It’s Subterfuge and Camouflage 101. “What’s your name?”

“Janice Opatz. I’m the Milkfed Mary chaperone.”

I raised my eyebrows just enough to indicate it had occurred to me how lousy she was at her job, and then continued my offense. “That’s your room off the dormitory above?”

“Yes …”

“And your office is the one next to it?”

“No, that’s …” Some instinct drew her up short. If her age was any indicator, she was a veteran chaperone, which meant she’d have a juiced-up shit-sniffer herself. “I think we’re done here. I didn’t catch your name.”

Now that I’d promised the impossible to Mrs. Pederson, I figured I better do my best to keep all avenues open. “Mira James.” I put out my hand. “I’m from Battle Lake.”

Janice shook it, giving me a Switzerland smile. “I’m sure I’ll see you around.”

“I’m sure.” She resumed following Mrs. Pederson and the police, and I headed to the Midway to search out Mrs. Berns. My head was full and I needed someone to help me sort everything out. I was so deep in my muddied thoughts that I barreled right into a very tall young man with a sign on a stick.

“Oh! I’m sorry.”

He regained his balance, allowing me to read his placard, which said, “Free the Cows!” I looked over my shoulder into the cattle barn I had recently exited. Inside, the cows appeared more comfortable than most humans at the fair—they had fans blowing on them, they got brushed, fed, and watered regularly, and they could poop right where they stood and someone else cleaned it up. I knew a lot of men and more than a few women in Battle Lake for whom, if you threw in a working television, that would be the definition of paradise.

Twenty or so other protestors milled around, their signs also denouncing some aspect of the dairy industry. It made me exhausted just to read them, so I strode off without any further interaction. I cruised to the Midway and sought out the games area, which was lined with stalls—balloon darts, frog fishing, basketball, skeeball, ring toss, break-a-plate or whack-a-mole, rubber duck grab—probably fifty stalls in all ringing the sides of the game area with more in the middle. I noted as I walked that either my black mood had affected my senses or I had stumbled into the seedy side of the fair. Likely, both. The carnies in the game booths cajoled me to buy three darts for $5, or try my luck with a basketball. The crowds were thin here, and so the carnival workers were aggressive, insulting me when I walked by without acknowledging them, catcalling and hooting.

“Hey baby, you wanna pump my gun? Every girl’s a winner at this booth!”

“Where you going? Spend some time with a lonely carnie! I promise I won’t bite, sweetheart.”

The farther in I walked, the higher my hackles rose. I had tripped into the dark side, a mangy place populated with carnie rats, cheap, polyester dolls made in overseas sweatshops, and prize mirrors and T-shirts adorned with pictures of large-breasted women and sexist slogans. It felt like everyone around me had developed flashing eyes and sharp incisors, and when I dared a glance up, I met the gaze of the short-range-shooting booth operator, who was suggestively rimming a Hot Pocket.

“Where’s the fire?”

“Mrs. Berns!” My relief was immense. The sleaziness of the moment melted. A family walked past, their little girl smiling at her massive puff of cotton candy, and the wolves retreated into the shadows.

“Who else? Check these out!” She was cradling two stuffed pitbulls, each the size of a widescreen TV. “I woulda won three but he kicked me out. Said there was a limit, but I didn’t see a sign.”

My heartbeat slowed to normal. “Maybe he meant a limit to good taste?”

“Can you carry one of these? A strong wind picks up, and I’ll have to choose between me and them.”

I hoisted one on my shoulder and grabbed the other with my free hand. “We should probably get these and you into a taxi. It’s been a long day. Where’re you staying?”

“I got a nice little trailer here at the fair.”

“Really? Where?”

Mrs. Berns smiled at me. “Can I buy you dinner? Deep fried pickle? Chocolate-dipped bacon? Teriyaki ostrich skewers?”

My shoulders tightened as I realized where this was headed, and all the trauma of the day came home to roost. “Oh no.”

“Oh yes. There’s plenty of room in that pimpmobile Ron passes for a trailer. No sense me wasting my money on a hotel room. Besides, I already unpacked.”

“I go to bed early.”

“You think anyone in Battle Lake doesn’t know that? You’ve gotta be dryer than lint by now, all those nights alone with just the TV and your animals.” Mrs. Berns cackled. “Don’t worry. I won’t put a dent in your lifestyle. Now let’s go store those dogs. I don’t want people to think I’m a show-off.”

I considered telling her that with the
epée
still strapped to her waist, people thinking she was a show-off might be the least of her worries, but why point out a ding in a person’s windshield when they were lucky to have the car running? And truth be told, I was more than a little relieved Mrs. Berns would be staying with me. I didn’t want to be alone tonight. I trudged behind her, the bizarreness of the day fully catching up to me and wiping me out, and it wasn’t even suppertime. By the time we reached the campgrounds, I was dragging. I felt like I had walked to the State Fair from Otter Tail County. Barefoot.

“You left the door open,” Mrs. Berns said.

“No I didn’t.”

“Well then, it opened itself, because it’s swinging in the wind.”

I shuddered as my body scraped the bottom of the adrenaline barrel. After finding Mrs. Berns in the trailer earlier today, I had been extra careful to lock the door on my way out. No way had it come open on its own. Someone had broken in, and there was a possibility they were still inside. I set down the pitbulls and was reaching to pull Mrs. Berns away from the Airstream when I was sideswiped by my third shock of the day.