by Jess Lourey
I lay in the white wrought iron bed Sunny had left, the blankets tangled around my feet and my hair fuzzy from constant shifting. The house still had the residual odor of all the cigarettes smoked in it in the years Sunny had occupied it. The funny thing about cigarette smoke is that it never goes away, even if the cigarettes do. It transforms itself into a composting, almost fresh question of a smell, but it’s always undeniably there.
I had quit smoking myself in the past year, and like all quitters, I couldn’t stand the smell of my past mistakes. I had burned incense, sprayed the bizarre magical potion named Febreze, and placed fans in windows, but the smell still hung around like an awkward silence. This morning my mood made the quiet stench a little more aggressive, and it pushed itself up my nose as the “what-cheer, what-cheer, birdie, birdie, birdie” call of the cardinal that I had been feeding knocked at my skull.
For me, birds fell in the same category as snakes—weird, dirty, and to be avoided—yet I fed them obsessively, kind of an offering to the bird kingdom to keep them pacified. If all the birds banded together, humans would be in some kind of trouble, and I wanted to be on the right side of that fight. This respect/disgust relationship I had with birds actually resulted in me being pretty knowledgeable about them. Know thine enemy. I had coaxed some song sparrows, a goldfinch, a couple rose-breasted grosbeaks, and I think maybe even a brilliant orange oriole to the backyard via various birdfeeders, a birdbath, and
orange halves nailed to a tree. To the casual observer, be she bird or human, I looked like a supporter.
The bird noises pushed me out of bed well before my alarm went off. I had to go back to work today, I knew, and my stomach was heavy at the thought. I hadn’t been back since I found the body yesterday morning. The anger I had felt at the thought of Jeff meeting another woman and the exhilarating fear of breaking into his hotel room had turned to tart depression. Before I learned about his Saturday night rendezvous, his death had been tragic and our love destined. Now, he was just another guy I probably shouldn’t have slept with.
But depression, along with most other extreme emotions, spurs me to action, so after a hot shower and a breakfast of vanilla soy milk over 100% Whole Wheat Total, the cereal of the gods, I was ready to figure out what exactly was going on in this town. Where before I was Mira the Stricken Lover in search of answers, I was now Mira the Righteous in search of truth.
The message from Ron Sims, the editor of the Recall, that was waiting on my machine when I got home last night had only paved my path. He had asked me to write a full article on Jeff’s death for the front page. Now I had a justification to be nosy.
I set out a plan for the day. I would go to work, spray some Lysol to get rid of dead body germs, conduct online searches to find out what it was I had seen on the Jorgensen farm, call Karl at the bank to find out what he knew about the Jorgensen land and consecrated ceremonial grounds, and, at lunch, go fishing with Curtis Poling. Somewhere in there I’d need to track down Gina to find out what she knew about our esteemed mayor and our police chief.
While digging through my disorganized closet, I recognized the need to feel attractive today. There’s something about the death of someone you had sex with that makes you feel like you have to prove something. Plus, there was another woman out there I was competing with, even though our prize was dead.
I wasn’t much for makeup, because I noticed that women who wear it regularly experience some sort of face drain. This is most obvious when you catch them without their makeup. They look pasty and much like fetal pigs in a way that non-makeup-wearers never look. Makeup is the great body snatcher of our time, some sort of addictive, living substance that preys quietly on the heads of its victims. This is not to say I was above some serious chick-in-an-MTV-video eye work, base, blush, and lipstick on a good night out. But every day? No way.
Since I wasn’t changing the face, it had to be all about the clothes. The proper uniform for this battle would involve my faded button-fly size 32 Levi’s, which were almost comfortable after a couple hours’ wear, a sports bra under a tight white T-shirt to insinuate breasts, and my brown cowboy boots. I was still getting used to the boots. They had looked cool in the store yesterday, but wearing them always seemed like too much of a statement, somewhere between high heels and farm work, and I didn’t fit in that spectrum. I topped it off with my raggedy brown suede jacket.
I left my hair as is because I never combed it wet. Tim Veeder, the “new boy” back in my seventh grade, whispered once to me in class that Victoria Principal, star of Dallas and the woman he loved, never combed her hair when it was wet. She swore it destroyed the hair’s natural state. Since Tim was the boy I was going to marry that month, what with his black Irish good looks and not-from-around-here mysteriousness, I decided it best that I model myself after Victoria Principal to make following fate’s plan for us that much easier on him. That single habit was my only carryover from that female-norming period called junior high, thank God.
On the way out the door, I remembered I didn’t have any earrings and went into the bedroom to grab my favorite pair of silver Bali hoops. One slid out of my hand and rolled under my bed. I got on my knees and felt around, my fingers quickly running across the cool metal. The hoop caught on something when I pulled it out. Once in the sunlight, I could see it was a notebook. Jeff’s field book. I recognized the worn leather cover, and when I held it to my nose, his smell whispered out—laundry soap and cedar. It must have fallen out of his knapsack when he was last here. This was the gold mine I’d been hoping to find in Jeff’s motel room the night before.
I paged through the dated notes, stopping at the first mention of Jorgenson. On a page dated April 12, Jeff had written, “abstract, Jorgensens sold the land by U.S. government in 1877, R. B. Hayes, President, and B. L. Lang, Secretary. Land passed through various hands over the years, all of them Jorgensens. It’s a gamble.” My brain lurched back to Kennie and Gary Wohnt’s conversation. “This town isn’t ready for gambling,” the Chief had said. Had Jeff uncovered a plan by Kennie to bring illegal gambling to Battle Lake? Would that be enough reason for her to murder him?
I paged forward to May Day, the day Jeff and I had met. On the sheet, he had written land measurements and flower names in his chicken scratch, and on the bottom of a page full of scribbles, he wrote “beautiful woman.” I smiled in spite of myself, and then stuck my tongue out as I realized maybe I wasn’t the woman he was referring to.
The next page had the information I was looking for: “Petroglyphs? Call Trillings v.p.” and a phone number. The following page had the words “Interview C. Poling.” That was the second time in twenty-four hours I had heard that name. I was more certain than ever that I had to visit the Senior Sunset. The rest of the pages didn’t offer up anything beyond doodles and measurements, and a thorough search of the bedroom assured me that Jeff hadn’t left anything else. I stashed the important pages in an ornamental tin and then popped the field book into my pocket and the hoops into my ears.
I slid behind the wheel of my Toyota, wet hair stiff from the cool morning air, cheeks baby-naked, and clothes an hour and a half away from being comfortable. When I arrived at the library door, the first thing I noticed was that the police tape was gone. Say what you will, that Gary Wohnt was one efficient cop. I pictured his shiny lips and hair, intimidating bulk stuffed in a uniform, and the overall darkness of his aura. He might have some Native American blood in him by his coloring, but his attitude was all small-town authority. It occurred to me that Wohnt was about the same age as Jeff and had grown up in Battle Lake as well. It might be worth my while to deal with him head on and find out why he thought Jeff had been killed. If nothing else,
if he knew it was me spying on Kennie and him last night, I would rather seek him out than have him hunt me down. In my experience, the more aggressive a woman is, the less guilty she seems. Or maybe it’s the guiltier an aggressive woman is, the less rational she becomes. That’s a hard thing to judge from the
inside.
I pulled Jeff’s field book out of my back pocket. I opened up the book to the first clean page, pulled out some paper tails stuck in the spiral coil, and wrote “talk to Wohnt” on my to-do list. I was a pretty good multitasker, but the combination of a new relationship and a death had handicapped me. I thought it best to write stuff down. Besides, it made me feel cool, organized, and secretive.
The pages I had pulled out verified that Jeff had gone back to look at the carvings. Petroglyphs, he called them. They must have been so important that he contacted a colleague immediately, perhaps a chick like Lara Croft, Tomb Raider, who had met him at the Jorgensen farm that night. That’s who Scott the Bait Boy had seen him with.
This colleague corroborated Jeff’s findings, probably screwed him in an exotic and mutually satisfying way that a native Minnesotan could only dream about, and then killed him so she would get credit for the find. Or some competing company sent in a female assassin so they could buy the land and its treasure of authentic Indian carvings right out from under Trillings.
Or something like that. I was hoping Curtis Poling could fill in some blanks for me, because I was pretty certain the mound was connected to Jeff’s death. I needed to know why it was such a big deal, and the library would provide answers. I just had to figure out how I was going to talk myself into entering the building where I had found Jeff’s body twenty-four short hours earlier.
I had my ghost-feelers out as I approached the front door of the library. Except for the guided tour Mrs. Berns was leading for her fellow old-homies, everything seemed in order for a Wednesday morning.
“And here is where I first heard about the murder,” Mrs. Berns creaked as she pointed at the spot on the sidewalk where our paths had crossed about this time yesterday.
“Are milk or rolls included in the cost of the tour, honey?” an old woman in the back of the group asked, her arm raised, revealing dangling, old-lady chicken wings waggling out of her short sleeve. She wore a pink paisley-print dress under a yellowed sweater, an apron, knee socks, and sparkling white tennis shoes.
Mrs. Berns adjusted her sun visor, causing the hand-lettered “Murder Guide” card to fall to the ground. I picked it up and handed it to her. “Good morning, Mrs. Berns.”
“When you gonna open the door?” she asked, eyeing the apron-wearer in the back.
“At opening time, Mrs. Berns,” I said, tapping my finger on the sign on the other side of the glass. “It shouldn’t be more than fifteen minutes.”
“Well, I’m going to need you to speed it up,” she said, fists on hips. Her liver spots brawled for sun space on the back of each hand.
Normally, I’m a stickler for rules that allow me freedom or control over others, but I was in no hurry to be alone in the library today. “OK, Mrs. Berns, you can all come in now, but you can’t check out books until I get the computers up and running, and don’t expect to get in early every day.”
Mrs. Berns snorted but didn’t want to risk losing her in by stating the obvious—crowds weren’t a real 911-type problem at the Battle Lake Public Library.
I inserted the key, rolled the lock back on the tumbler, shoved the door open, and paused a moment. I expected there to be a distinct odor fingering my nose, maybe a mausoleum tang, but between the pungent smell of cleaning supplies in front of me and the push of old folks behind me, there wasn’t much out of the ordinary I could sense.
I stepped back to let the crowd pass and flicked on the lights. I sucked a deep breath, turned on the computer and printers, and performed assorted library stuff, surprised to find the routine soothing.
Lartel, the head librarian, had hired and trained me in, being the only other employee of the library. He was a tall, thick man with eyes green and busy like bottle flies on the dark meat of his face. In his early forties, Lartel was bald except for one of those weird rings of hair bald men refuse to shave off. It started above one ear and wrapped around his head to directly above his other ear. It was like his head wore a mini mink stole to keep it warm. Despite his build and the constant white noise of his wind pants, he managed to fit into the library environment. He had a strong sense of order and talked only when necessary.
“Unlocked the door?” he asked me on my first day on the job.
“Yup.”
“Turned on the computer?”
“Yup.”
“Then walk the aisles.”
This was his term for “shelf reading”—going up and down the rows, book by book, and making sure no one had defiled the memory of Melvil Dewey by slipping out an H347.23 to glance at the cover and sliding it back into the H347.12 spot. I walked the aisles a lot under Lartel’s fleshy gaze, and sometimes, when he wasn’t looking, I marched down them like a soldier.
I stumbled through pretty well during my three weeks of training with him. It wasn’t that hard to be a librarian’s assistant, really. Type an author or title in the computer, and if it comes up, you got it; if it doesn’t, you don’t. If the book is available, you walk over to the appropriate aisle and hunt till you find it. I had always had a gift for finding things, probably because I was so good at hiding. My favorite part of the job was putting away the books. It had a sensory appeal, the smooth and colorful hardbacks sliding cleanly into place, a little bit of the world falling in order.
I tuned out the chicken chatter of Mrs. Berns’s tour as I gathered up the books from the overnight dropoff. The bin had been empty when I left the crime scene yesterday, but it was nearly full today. I suspected the unusual number of returned books was more a product of ambulance chasing than a sudden surge in civic duty. I must have been in a mini-trance, because Mrs. Berns and her group were at the front desk all of a sudden.
“Where’s the mess?” Mrs. Berns demanded.
I focused my eyes and grimaced. “It’s all cleaned up, Mrs. Berns.” Then I paused. “Right?”
“Riiiight,” Mrs. Berns said, wagging her head and drawing out the word. “It’s all cleaned up and we’ve wasted our time. I promised a tour, and everyone is terribly disappointed that there is no murder evidence here.”
I looked past her blue hair to the group of six waiting behind her. Actually, they all looked pretty pleased just to be in a new building. They also all were starting to look a little birdlike, and I wondered if I was going to have to start putting out old-people feeders to appease them like I was doing with the feathered population. I dismissed the idea as too expensive—bridge mix and date bars didn’t come in bulk like thistle seed. So I did the best I could given the circumstances.
“He wasn’t shot in the library, Mrs. Berns, so there wasn’t really any blood here. But the police did find a bunch of pencils on him, and we’re giving them away as souvenirs to our first visitors of the day.” I reached below the counter and pulled out the box of omnipresent library mini-pencils. I had always wondered why libraries didn’t just buy regular-length pencils that would last longer, but now that I worked at a library, I knew there were some things you didn’t question. That’s just how it was.
Mrs. Berns eyed the box suspiciously but didn’t have any options left if she wanted to keep the crowd happy. She grabbed the container out of my hand, passed it around, and dumped what was left into her purse. “Come on!” she said and marched toward the door.
They were almost all out when a thought occurred to me. “Wait!” I yelled.
The Apron Lady in the back stopped and turned to me, smiling kindly. “Yes, dear, you don’t have to yell.”
“Sorry,” I said, walking over to her. “Do you know Curtis Poling?”
She blushed and looked down at her pristine tennies. “Yes, but you should ask Mrs. Berns about him. They’re an item, you know.”
Super, I thought. Even the octogenarians were getting some around here. “I don’t need to know anything personal,” I said. “I just wonder if you think he would be around about eleven o’clock today. I wanted to ask him some questions about the town’s history. For an article I’m writing.”
>
Apron Lady smiled. “Curtis is always around,” she said. “Around lunchtime, he’ll be out fishing.”
“Thank you,” I said. She opened the door and twirled out. I hoped I could still twirl when I was her age. I turned my attention back to the library and realized that I should go check out the place where I had found Jeff’s body. I wasn’t going to have anything sneak up on me. I strode purposefully toward the aisle and turned to look down it. Nothing but fresh, clean, tight-weave Berber.
Out of curiosity, I went back to the reference section. All the encyclopedias were accounted for and in order, even the L. Around the encyclopedias were two unusual displays Lartel had told me were from his own personal collection: on the top shelf, his stuffed fish collection, and on the bottom, his array of Battle Lake High yearbooks, starting in 1953 and going right up to last year. On a hunch, I kneeled down and traced my fingers across the annuals’ green faux-leather spines and slipped out the book for 1982, the text of the invitation I had found by Jeff’s body imprinted in my mind.
The yearbook’s front cover had a red-faced Indian in a headdress, a fighting “whoop” coming out of his mouth. Underneath were etched the words “Battle Lake Battlers Class of 1982.” This yearbook was from the self-involved eighties, before racism and violence were recognized as contagious. In recent years, the high school had changed its mascot to the bulldog. It was still mean, but no dogs were going to picket the choice.
I made my way to the seniors’ section and marveled at the shiny, feather-haired class of ’82. Class song: “Thriller,” by Michael Jackson. Class movie: Zapped!, Porky’s, Gandhi (three-way tie). Class TV show: The A-Team. Sad world deaths: John Belushi, Princess Grace of Monaco, Barney Clark. Class colors: green and silver. Class motto: “Love Lift Us Up Where We Belong.”
