September Mourn

by Jess Lourey

  “People don’t just tell you if their boss is a murderer.”

  “They don’t tell just anybody, but they tell their sheep sisters. Come on.”

  Thirty

  The satellite office of the State Fair Corporation located on the fairgrounds was an unpresuming structure housed on the northwest corner, near Heritage Square. The building was one-story gray brick with no sign out front, and I’d probably walked past it a hundred times.

  “You’d think they’d advertise what they are.”

  “Probably don’t want to be bothered. Come on inside and meet Eustia.”

  The woman behind the counter looked as though she’d been separated from Mrs. Berns at birth. Mrs. Berns was ten or so years older, if depth of wrinkles and posture were any guide, but they both had tightly sprung apricot curls, assertive noses, and tiny bodies. They also both dressed with their own little pizzazz, though Eustia’s ran toward the wild-fingernail-art end of the spectrum, whereas Mrs. Berns was more about accoutrements, usually in the form of decorative weaponry.

  “How can you type with those?” I asked after introductions had been made and mutton-busting camaraderie exchanged. Eustia’s fingernails were long enough to curve downward and painted red, white, and blue.

  “Practice,” she cackled. Surely, the tiny woman was Mrs. Berns’ long-lost sister.

  “I was telling Mira here that you know all about Kate Lewis. Said you might be willing to give us the skinny about her embezzling.”

  Eustia looked toward the entrance. “I don’t remember saying that.”

  “Come on now. Do I have to crack out the tequila again?”

  “Oy, not the tequila,” Eustia said, chuckling. “My head’s still pounding from the other night.”

  Mrs. Berns leaned in and whispered. “Look here, Eustia, we just want to satisfy our curiosity. What you say in this office won’t go outside of it.”

  Eustia sighed, glancing worriedly at the door again. “You swear?”

  “Cross our hearts,” we both said in unison.

  “Well get closer, and if anyone walks in, you two are just looking for directions.”

  “You got it.”

  Eustia lowered her voice to a raspy whisper. “Kate’s from your neck of the woods, you know. Graduated high school in Fergus Falls. Isn’t that by Battle Lake?”

  “Just up the road,” Mrs. Berns said.

  “After she graduated, she attended the community college there, then transferred to the University in Minneapolis. Ended up with a business degree, an MBA to be specific, but fat lot of good it does her. Doesn’t keep her husband from abusing her. The more he yells at her, the more she eats, the sadder she gets, and the more he yells at her. Before I got transferred here, I was her personal receptionist. Sat outside her office listening to those two fight, either over the phone or when he’d stop by her offices.”

  “What’s he do?” Mrs. Berns asked.

  “Besides nurturing his gambling addiction? Oh, he works for the State Fair Corporation, too. Maintenance man. That woman married beneath her, but I don’t mean because of his job. That man’s a waste of skin, simple as that.”

  Mrs. Berns nodded. “Sounds like the truth.”

  I remembered the man that Kate had been arguing with in the alley behind the Dairy building. “Is her husband short?”

  “I’d say so. Not more than 5'7", though he wears those silly inserts. Looks like he’s always gliding down a mountain, even when he’s standing stock still.”

  “So, do you think she was embezzling?”

  “I don’t need to think what I know. I saw the books.” Eustia crossed her arms and leaned back, no longer whispering. “She started by skimming a little off the top, but when that wouldn’t satisfy that bastard husband of hers, she’d make $10,000 disappear in a couple of months. I think they flew around the world so he could gamble where the laws were more lenient. Big trouble, that. You get in over your head quick. It was only a matter of time before the authorities caught up with her. I should have turned her in much earlier, but I felt sorry for her.”

  So Eustia was the whistle blower. “Think she’s going to jail?”

  Eustia nodded. “For sure. We’re just hoping she doesn’t drag the fair down with her, and I think she feels the same way. I believe she always planned to pay it back. She loves this fair more than anybody, and if it weren’t for her husband, she’d never of harmed it. Too late to worry about that, though. Her ass is in the shit can, and last I saw her, she was a desperate woman.”

  “How desperate?”

  Eustia scrunched up her face, which caused her bejeweled glasses to slide off her nose, where they were caught by their chain. “Between you, me, and the wall, I think she let that bull out the other day. She wanted to get more press for the fair. If it breaks even this year, she won’t have hurt it permanently. We’ll recover next year. But if ticket sales don’t cover enough of the bills that have gone unpaid, we’re going under.”

  “That’s stupid,” Mrs. Berns said. “Releasing dangerous animals is no way to attract people. Why, if I wanted to get some rubberneckers in, what I’d do is …” She slapped her mouth shut.

  I finished her thought. “You’d murder someone?”

  “I was going to say I’d have a wet T-shirt contest.”

  “Nice save.”

  Eustia didn’t have anything more to share, and she and Mrs. Berns devolved into talking shop. With nothing to add to the mutton busting conversation, I thanked Eustia for my time and excused myself. I needed some fresh air.

  My wandering didn’t clear my head, but it brought me past the Ag-Hort building. I figured I might as well write my articles as I couldn’t do what I really wanted to do—check the Milkfed Marys’ hair to see if they were all marked—until tomorrow, and I needed some mental space to connect the dots on Kate before gathering any more clues. Something was there, something that I was missing, a piece connecting her clearly to Lars Gunder and the two of them to Ashley’s murder.

  I stepped out of my head and into Ag-Hort.

  The interior of the building seemed busier than it had been during Henry Sunder’s book launch, but saying something was more busy at the fair was like calling someone more dead, or pregnanter.

  The main exhibit in the building changed every day. Today the focus was on honey, and the entire north end of the cavernous building was given up to displays of honey-sweetened baked goods, specialty honeys, cooking with honey demonstrations, active, glass-encased miniature apiaries, and beeswax sculptures.

  A woman leaned out of the stall nearest me, its front counter creaking under the weight of hundreds of jars of honey, a rainbow of yellows. She looked a little like a bumble bee herself, with her fuzzy blonde hair streaked with gray and wearing a black and gold striped T-shirt. “Care to try our basswood honey?” she called out.

  I stepped in and read her nametag. “Mrs. Lieber? Jenny Lieber?” She was exactly the person I’d come to see.

  “Yes?” She didn’t recognize me and her expression said that she felt bad about it.

  “Don’t worry. We’ve never met. I was just reading your tag and recognized the name. We’re both from Battle Lake. I work for the Recall. Ron Sims, the editor, has me at the fair covering locals. Your family owns the honey business south of town?”

  She held out her hand. “Pleased to meet you. Yup, we have Honig Lieber’s Honey Farm. Three of our honeys won grand prize ribbons this year!”

  “Was the basswood one of them?”

  “You betcha. Here you go.”

  I accepted the small plastic spoon that was handed to me. The dot of honey on it was the palest yellow, almost clear, and it smelled like flowers and sunshine. I licked it off, savoring the mild spread of sweetness and light. I almost moaned it was so delicious. “That’s wonderful. What makes it basswood honey?”

  “The hives are located in a basswood forest.”

  I was skeptical. “So it’s mostly basswood, but might have other stuff mixed in?”
>
  She laughed. “We make it as scientific as we can. Look at this.” She directed my attention to a row of ten honeys, arrayed from lightest to darkest. “Our basswood bees produce the super-light stuff. Buckwheat honey is the darkest, and it has the most antioxidants. Honey is healthy.”

  “Yum. Do you guys carry anything besides honey?”

  “Beeswax candles. My sister is over there if you want more info about those.”

  I thanked Jenny and moved on to her sister, who was womanning the beeswax stall on the opposite side of the honey room. I was fascinated by the comb pattern in her candles and the intricate shapes that could be formed from the wax. I listened to an impromptu candle-making lesson before tracking down Lisa Schmitz, Battle Lake’s reigning jelly-making queen, in the preserves room, which was adjacent to the honey room.

  Lisa was displaying her famous crabapple jam as well as golden raspberry jelly, apple butter, and wild grape jelly. I didn’t put up much of a fight when she made me sample each one. I wished I had my camera so I could snap a photo of the sunshine gliding in a high window and through a stacked pyramid of her wares. The sunbeam lit them up into the deepest peach and jeweled purples, an edible pirate’s treasure.

  After ascertaining that I’d spoken to the only Battle Lakeans in Ag-Hort, I sauntered over to the 4-H building, my belly full of homemade sweetness.

  Battle Lake was also represented well in this arena. The town boasted one of the largest 4-H groups in the state, and the participants had various projects on display, from homemade rocket ships to quilts to farm dioramas made from tinfoil, toothpicks, and tempera paints. I interviewed any of the kids who happened to be near their projects and convinced one of the leaders of the Battle Lake 4-H to e-mail me the photos she had taken so I’d have visuals to go with the article.

  After the 4-H building, I headed to the animal barns. I’d already inspected the Otter Tail County cows in the Cattle Barn, but still had stops to make in the Swine, Horse, and Sheep and Poultry barns.

  It was in the latter that I discovered that Dan’s prizewinning Araucana was in fact a chicken. According to the placard in front of the champion bird, the breed was both tufted and rumpless. “Sorry,” I whispered to the chicken. It couldn’t be easy to breed with those bona fides.

  It actually wasn’t bad-looking for a bird. The tufts of feathers near its ears looked regal, like one of those giant, ruffled collars that Victorian royalty wore. True, its butt was a sad little downward slope lacking definition or tail feathers, but if it was facing away, you could hardly notice.

  I was leaning in to determine once and for all whether or not chickens had ears when I realized that I had voluntarily walked into an entire structure given over to poultry.

  You see, avian critters and I didn’t mix. When they dive-bombed my windows, or swooped close to my head, or pooped on my shoulders, I knew the truth: birds were malicious, calculating creatures with a tremendous aerial advantage.

  Yet, peering around at the clucking, quacking inhabitants of the barn, it occurred to me that for the first time in my life, I was not scared. For sure it didn’t hurt that all the birds were locked in cages, but even better, I knew that if they were out, they couldn’t fly because they were chickens. If one of them happened to break free from its cage, all I had to do was run or kick it, and I’d be the winner.

  I closed my eyes in relief as a tremendous weight lifted from my shoulders. Why hadn’t I tried immersion therapy before? I knew how demented my bird phobia had been, but that shouldn’t have turned me away from them. Instead, I should have embraced the fowl world and moved on.

  Ah. The liberation of finding out you’re no longer afraid.

  “Wanna pet her?”

  “Eep!” I yelled, glancing over to see Dan had pulled a neighboring Araucana out of its cage and was offering it to me. The sound that had escaped my throat was a wet and choking squeal.

  The chicken cocked her head, mirth and malevolence in one beady eye. She blinked, and a dollop of poop fell out of her rumpless.

  “No. No, I do not want to pet your chicken. Thank you for the offer. I’m allergic.”

  “To chickens?”

  “All birds. Feathers. I’m allergic to feathers.” Suddenly, my world began to close in. Who had I been kidding? Birds were terrifying. I was outnumbered.

  “She lays green and blue eggs.”

  “Tell her I mean her no harm.”

  “Hunh?”

  “Tell her I’m sorry I had eggs for breakfast, and that I won’t let that happen again.”

  “You okay?”

  “Thank you. Yes, I’m totally okay. Time to go.”

  “Have you had a chance to see the sheep yet? They’re on the other side of the barn.”

  I didn’t even have the presence of mind to question that organizational choice because I was being approached by two black-headed ducks with bright orange eyes and a ring of fluff like a massive boa around their necks. They were waddling toward me with malicious intent, and I was fairly certain they were packing tiny shivs under all those feathers.

  “Some other time. Thanks!”

  I turned and tried to walk calmly away, but I imagined I could hear the leathery thwup-thwup of charging duck feet behind me, and so instead I ran, pretending I was charging toward something instead of fleeing.

  When I reached the sunlight and scared a flurry of pigeons into the air, I actually cried out.

  Thirty-One

  Later, after I’d sent the “Battle Lake at the Fair!” articles to Ron, I was calm enough to venture outside my trailer.

  In the course of writing the articles, I’d decided that I would attend Lissa’s party that evening. I felt valued writing for the newspaper and being a librarian, but I needed some closure to my past, the chunk of years that was defined by my drinking and emotional hiding.

  Part of me believed I needed to put the old me to rest before I could become the new me, and I desperately craved a fresh life, one without alcohol and people who clung together out of boredom and convenience rather than friendship.

  In Battle Lake, I had true friends, like Curtis and Mrs. Berns, or Nancy and Sid and Jed, whom I could count on. That was new to me, and a big deal. I wasn’t used to having people that I could rely on to pet sit, or bring me soup and bagels if I was sick.

  I was the first person to complain about living in a small town, but the truth was Battle Lake was a good place to heal. I couldn’t imagine myself residing there long term, but the comfort and safety of the place was helping me to move to a new level, one defined by the choices I made instead of the life events thrust on me.

  And saying goodbye to my empty, drunken, loose past would feel great. Maybe it would even free up some psychic space to make more room for Johnny.

  I splurged on a cab to the West Bank. The Metro Transit system at night felt about as safe as walking naked through a prison. Sure, a lot of people connected to Battle Lake had been murdered in the last five months, but at least we knew the killers by their first names. All part of the small-town charm.

  Come to think of it, I had read somewhere that the majority of murder victims knew their killer, yet I didn’t have any Battle Lake natives on the suspect list for Ashley’s death. The State Fair just felt too far away from home to look in that direction. If one of Ashley’s classmates or dance-line partners was going to off her, why would they bother doing it so far from home?

  I paid the cabbie $13, plus a $2 tip, and stepped onto Cedar Avenue in front of Palmer’s Bar, which was rocking as usual. When I had left the Cities last spring, the trend among college students and suburbanites was to prowl upscale bars expensively decorated to look like dives. Well, Palmer’s was the real deal, having more in common with the Mos Eisley Cantina in Star Wars than a Hard Rock Café. Inside, the drinks would be stiff, Hamms would be flowing on tap, and the jukebox would be stacked deep with an eclectic mix of local bands, blues, and acid metal.

  Directly across the street, reggae and a domestic fight
filtered out of the Holzermann, a rabbit’s warren of apartments snaking above the stores lining the opposite side of Cedar Avenue. I’d never met anyone who knew the actual number of apartments that comprised the Holzermann, or where it began or ended. A person could easily get lost in the crisscrossing halls, the dead ends, the studio apartments that were actually carved-out closets from the two-bedroom next door.

  I’d once attended a party there, above the West Bank drug store. During the course of the evening, a fire had erupted in the kitchen, probably started while someone was cooking drugs. Rather than calling the fire department and risking getting caught, the guy who rented the place put out the licking flames with an extinguisher.

  The fire had opened up enough of the thin wall to show through to the other side, where we discovered a dusty and worn but fully intact theater in the heart of the Holzermann, all entrances and windows to it completely boarded up and plastered over. We’d spent the night crawling in and out of the hole in his kitchen and acting silly on the stage.

  The West Bank was a strange place.

  I bypassed both the Holzermann and Palmer’s, skirting around the bar to the Riverside Plaza, the ugliest apartment complex west of the Mississippi. The imposing structures comprising the complex, each a different height, looked like enormous cinder blocks with multicolored panels placed randomly about.

  Instead of brightening the appearance, the dingy peach, powder blue, and Easter-egg green panels served to age the entire building. I’d been told that the front of the complex had been featured in the opening shots of The Mary Tyler Moore show, the idea being that Mary Richards lived inside. If that was true, it was a surprise anyone ever moved here, thinking that this was the best Minneapolis offered.

  Lissa lived in the McKnight building, the tallest in the complex. It had thirty-nine floors and over four hundred apartments, but only five elevators. A swaying man in work boots was urinating in the one that was open.