“Oh good!” Juliet said, seeing that one of Elizabeth Temple’s quilts was hung on the wall. When Elizabeth wasn’t carving frames for her son, she made quilts out of tiny dots of fabrics that ended up looking like they had been worked by Monet. Usually she resisted exhibiting, but had probably given in because the festival was so important to the town and she knew where her civic duty lay.
“I’m thinking of buying it,” Raphael said. “I don’t have any of her work and this one is exceptional. It looks like the autumn woods after a storm.”
“It’s magnificent.” Juliet could say this without the slightest twinge of envy. Along with eschewing worry and caffeine, she wasted no time or energy on jealousy. She was happy that Elizabeth was talented and that Raphael had the money to buy her quilt.
This was one of the many things that the reserved Raphael liked about her, though he never mentioned it to her after the first time. Juliet was not at ease with praise.
“Have you tried the deep-fried Twinkies yet?” she asked.
“I have not.” Raphael sounded so revolted that she had to laugh. “I was considering a visit to the Soup Kitchen for lunch. They have curry-pumpkin soup that may be edible.”
“That sounds nice. I noticed that most of the restaurants are offering special dishes this weekend.”
“Then let’s leave. We can be the first customers.”
“You’re done here?” she asked.
“Esteban did an excellent job of arranging things. I showed up to approve as a matter of form only.”
Juliet grinned.
“Me too. I didn’t have the heart to tell Rose that sweatshirts sell best when arranged by size and color and that I didn’t need a whole day to prepare them. I’ve been helping her hang stuff so she doesn’t fall off her chair but we finished that an hour ago.”
“You’re too nice for your own good.”
“You know, Raphael,” she said as they started for the door. “I don’t know that that’s true. I do the right things, always have, but I may not be a nice person at all.”
“You are still discovering yourself,” he answered matter-of-factly. “It takes a while to adjust to the outside world when you’ve been inside for as long as you were. You have to learn to make choices again, to realize that you can afford compassion and friendship and hope. At least with certain people.”
He spoke from experience. He had also done something clandestine for the government and it had put him in a wheelchair. If he was bitter about this, it never showed.
“Yes.”
And, as usual, he was right. She needed more time. Her old job had slowly lifted choice out of her hands, ostensibly so she could be free of outside distractions and get on with her work. Eventually they controlled her hours, her friends, her environment. And it was always their way or the highway. They pulled the strings and the obedient puppets reacted or got their strings cut.
At first, lonely and adrift after her parents’ deaths, she had been glad to find what looked like a new family with the rules and order she craved. Her boss had been kind and once he was aware of her talents he had shielded her from much of the pressure and unpleasant infighting. She had coasted along for decades, living in limbo, because it was easiest and because there was nothing else she wanted more than to sift through words, looking for evidence of terrorists at work, or play, or even being created. Mostly what she found were the stupid, unscrupulous, and terrified who were anything but criminal masterminds or even criminally minded. But sometimes she tracked down the real bad guys. She had thought that these occasional victories made everything else worthwhile.
It took someone close to her dying pointlessly for her to start seeing all the flaws, the systemic troubles and corruption by those higher up the food chain. And after she began really looking around, the good features of her work were outweighed by the system’s bad qualities. In fact, she soon had more entries in the minus side of her ledger than the Library of Congress. And the reward for doing her work well? She got to do the same thing over and over again—world without end, amen. And without her boss to watch her back and protect her from the infighting.
She discovered then that there was no work protocol for losing faith in one’s profession. Lose an arm, a leg, an eye, there were fixes on the books. Lose a job, a marriage, a house—bad, but they could be worked around. But faith? There was no substitute, no replacement for that. And without it, duty to a governmental god became impossible. Because she no longer felt she had an obligation to a three-letter agency that did a lot of harm along with the good.
When she left, she discarded everything she could to lighten her psyche. But just because she tossed out the uniform of bland business suits and the security card to the fourth floor, it didn’t mean that she could forget all the memories and training. Or emotional scars from incidents that had taught her to be wary.
It was probably a good thing the incident had happened. She preferred her life choices to be her own, that it was her fingers pulling the strings even if it meant surviving out in the cold, cruel world.
“I love the autumn, even if it is the dying time of the year,” Juliet said, partly changing the subject and partly to redirect her mind. “I’m glad we get color here. I can’t imagine autumn without all the fire.”
Raphael nodded.
“Summer’s last, loveliest smile,” he agreed, slightly misquoting William Cullen Bryant.
Chapter 2
The rain came hard around sunset and flung spatters of fiery leaves against her windows. Juliet hoped the plastic at the tent kept everything dry and thieves would be as reluctant to be out in the weather as the rent-a-cop would be, otherwise her merchandise was there for the taking.
She wasn’t going to worry about it though. Her sweatshirts were washable and she was insured. Creatures were prowling around in the dark outside her cabin, but they wouldn’t bother her. She had a fire in the stove, some ginger tea, and Marley for company. And bed was waiting. She would huddle gladly with her cat, made small and unnoticeable by the storm.
Sleep was hard to come by though once the lights were out. She kept thinking of the gaunt figure with the balloons and felt uneasy though she couldn’t guess why.
Carrie had left her a stack of fashion magazines the month before, only one of which she had read. From it she had learned that a) she didn’t care for the new style of low-cut jeans, and b) that you could pay an indecent amount of money for a mascara that still looked fake and clumped just like the cheaper brands at the drug store, and c) that Carrie Simmons would go completely nuts if she kept trying to emulate the teenage stick insects the magazines held up as the highest standards of beauty.
Grumbling, she turned on the light and picked up the next magazine in the stack. And abandoned it only minutes later.
At midnight, with sleep further away than ever, she began to consider the bottle of brandy in the cupboard, but rejected the idea immediately. Sleeping pills, alcohol, sex—any of them would stroke your brow and tell you everything would be fine. But they lied. None of those things could make anything “fine.” Juliet had developed a ritualized relationship with them from her years on the job. She had rules about when, where, and why to indulge. Being awake at midnight wasn’t one of the okay reasons to use them.
With that decided, she turned off the lamp and fell instantly asleep. She didn’t waken until dawn.
Juliet didn’t usually care for company before her brain was operational, but her cat was the exception, which was fortunate because Marley was not to be denied. He knew there were special cans in the cupboard meant only for his pleasure and wished her to be up and opening them once there was any sign of the sky lightening.
“Okay, you pushy beast,” she muttered, feeling for her slippers.
The cat’s breakfast came first and then some black tea for herself. She stood at her windows admiring the fallen leaves as she sipped from her mug and gradually reached full wakefulness. Her yard was a landscape in scarlet and gold. The last o
f the clouds, hanging around like ghosts on the top of the ridge, were slowly burning off in the light of full day. Encouraged by Raphael’s quote, she thought of that poem by Tennyson, the one about looking over the happy autumn fields and thinking of the days that are no more, then decided it was too sad. Bryant had said it better. Let summer have her last smile.
Juliet allowed herself two minutes more of meditation over her tea and then went to dress. She had made a special haunted house sweatshirt for the occasion, a gray silhouette on a black shirt. It was time to start trawling for the tourists’ dollars which were less plentiful these days. Most of their visitors worked for computer firms who encouraged their employees to take their spare dollars and invest them in stock programs to keep the company “strong” and to protect their jobs. But then when the CEOs folded up shop the employees were left with worthless e-bonds and securities. It wasn’t a fair exchange, but it was the norm. And people kept investing because sometimes it paid off in a big way. They were nervous though and not as reckless at spending as they had been the decade before.
The fair officially opened at ten, but there was bound to be a little cleanup needed at the booths, which were hopefully still standing after the night wind had done its work. She needed to get moving.
* * *
Juliet kept her sigh to herself. Rose looked like Hollywood’s 1950 version of a maiden librarian, but she was dressed like a teenage hippie on the way to Woodstock who had gotten tangled up with a mummy. It often seemed to Juliet like Rose had gone off somewhere to smoke a joint around 1965 and just stayed there, huddled in her beads and paranoia. Juliet feared her strange style was so engrained that the tidy bun and batwing caftans had actually impregnated her identity. The past inhabited her, mind and body, and left her ill-prepared to face the modern age. Juliet found this distressing and it made her protective—something she did not care for.
Still, she liked Rose, liked the idea that she could call her up and go for a drink or antiquing—though she had never done either thing, but it was pleasant to have tea with someone who knew nothing about the world of lies and bureaucracy where Juliet had lived for so many years. It let her feel normal.
Juliet watched as the giant pumpkin weigh-in started. It was slow going and involved a small crane lifting the squash on to a livestock scale. It was wonderful and horrifying to think that a vegetable could weigh as much as a thousand pounds.
The lesser squashes being unloaded for punkin chunkin were uniformly round and either Halloween orange or white—Caspers, Luminas, and La Estrellas were the white ones. She couldn’t remember what the orange kind were called and didn’t want to call Garret over to remind her. They all seemed to also be of a pretty consistent size. Garret had explained that some competitions allowed the contestants to bring their own squash, but this was a straight-up test of slings, catapults, and trebuchets—but no air cannons since there was an ordinance against discharging cannons within the town limits and there hadn’t been time for the town council to meet and vote on a waiver. The one who could throw an eight- to ten-pound pumpkin the farthest would win. The official distance to beat, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, was four thousand, three hundred twenty-nine feet. It wasn’t likely to happen but the sheriff had been walking around with a gleam in his eye for weeks muttering four-three-three-oh and singing what he informed her was the official punkin chunkin anthem.
Juliet shook her head at the charming form of madness.
Less pleasantly, the balloon man was there bright and early, still clutching his fist of strings with creepy, long fingers. As Juliet had predicted, bolder children approached him on a dare and the shy ones stayed back, refusing to get close, even when their parents urged them. Between sales of sweatshirts, which were brisk in the morning when it was chilly but slower once the sun was out, Juliet followed his shambling progress. He seemed to be visiting most of the booths, leaving balloons like calling cards. Carrie Simmons predictably flirted with him, but Juliet didn’t think her heart was in it. Though she was dressed like Morticia Addams and he made a good foil, she didn’t seem drawn to Baron Samedi. He left a very traditional-looking vampire balloon tied to the leg of her tent. Juliet wondered how he chose and if he were leaving some kind of message.
“You’re doing well,” Rose said. She had also been moderately busy.
“Yes.” Juliet’s Halloween trick-or-treat bags sold out almost immediately and half her autumn-themed sweatshirts were gone. Next year, assuming they still held the festival, she would make more. Also more things for smaller children would be good. She made a mental note of that and hoped she didn’t lose the Post-it before implementation. It sometimes happened. It was why she usually wrote things down. “I should have done more children’s t-shirts and trick-or-treat bags though. I was playing it safe and underestimated.”
“Next year. I’m thinking about adding doggie sweaters. Look at how many people brought dogs.”
“There are a lot of them,” Juliet said absently as she considered and then rejected also making dog clothing. “I wonder if cats would like fur toys.”
Rose brightened at this idea and began discussing the ways she might be able to get mouse hairs.
“Maybe from a pet shop,” Juliet suggested, secretly thinking it was the worst idea of all time. She wouldn’t give Marley a toy made of real rodent hair.
The balloon man continued his stroll as they visited and discussed merchandise. It was almost noon, and the shrinking shadows rested lightly only at the edges of the parking lot. A slight breeze was picking up, carrying the scent of redwoods and the caws of the crows that strutted around the edges of the parking lot. Temperatures were almost warm. Juliet noticed some of the character actors in heavy velvet shrouds were beginning to sweat and it made their face paint blur.
Lulu Weston, a timid graying redhead who was turning from attractive strawberry blonde to an equally attractive pink frost, saw the balloon man coming and fled, leaving the booth to her teenaged assistant. The kid was wearing a gory t-shirt that demonstrated his taste—or lack of it—in splatter films, but he was not at ease with Comstock either. His posture was ramrod straight and he refused to have direct eye contact.
The balloon man left a helium balloon of a half-eaten zombie victim at Lulu’s tent. The kid obviously thought it was cool, and the balloons really were works of art—perhaps transfers from movie stills—but he took it down as soon as Comstock moved on. He obviously knew that Lulu Weston wouldn’t like it and it clashed with her fairytale glasswork.
Fascinated by his progress and people’s reaction to it, Juliet watched the bag of bones shamble along, now wearing a slightly subdued but, to her, quite obvious air of triumph, as if pleased that he had made the timid woman flee and bothered a teenage boy. That suggested that he possessed an unpleasant nature. She hoped he would stop by her booth before she had to leave for the chunkin, though she knew it would probably upset Rose if he did. His painted smile of skeletal teeth was rather nasty and he probably had a bad aura which only Rose could see. Still, Juliet wanted to meet him.
His presence wasn’t met with much enthusiasm at Hans’ booth, though the carver was polite. Darby also managed a smile as she accepted a balloon, but Juliet knew it was fake and that she didn’t care for the witch balloon he left. What was it about the man that made people so uneasy? Yes, his makeup was good, but there were several zombies and vampires strolling through the fair that looked equally hideous and no one seemed upset by them. There had to be something about him up close and personal that repelled.
“Do you have any vampire baseball caps?” a girl of about twelve asked Juliet, intruding on her speculation.
“Would a vampire bat do?” Juliet asked, forcing her attention away from Comstock and his balloons. She had done a few caps with a bat silhouetted against the moon which glowed in the dark. They were fruit bats, but most people didn’t know or care. The girl looked uncertain, probably hoping for something that said Twilight, but finally she decided that
maybe a bat was okay.
Juliet asked her if she wanted a bag, but the girl chose to wear it.
The crowds were getting heavier, especially near the food booths, but Juliet found Comstock almost at once. He was at the ironmonger’s tent. Xander, looking very much like a carnival strong man in a striped wife-beater shirt, was pounding on a stake that he pulled in and out of his forge. Comstock paused outside the tent and looked in. Xander Lawson was at the back, the forge set up just outside the booth where there was no danger of sparks flying up and starting a fire. When Comstock paused, Xander turned and raised his hammer in what Juliet could only describe as a very menacing manner.
The balloon man smiled his rictus grin, tied a balloon of someone in a bloody hockey mask to the tent leg, and passed on.
Along the way he sold a few balloons to older kids, still strolling casually but always looking around, and Juliet was sure that he was making for Madame Mimm’s garish tent. She won the bet with herself, though once there, he had to wait for a client to leave before he ducked inside. He left a balloon of a woman burning at the stake tied to the tent flap. He did not doff his top hat.
Juliet braced herself, half expecting there to be shouting, but nothing happened. At least nothing she could hear above the Ghost Town Minstrels who were starting their first set of the day. There was also distant cheering. She waited for him to come out again, but Rose reminded her that it was noon and she had promised to watch Sheriff Garret hurl squash.
Juliet reluctantly left off her study of the balloon man.
Sheriff Garret was tall and therefore easy to find. He was also looking very wholesome and casual, wearing street clothes instead of his uniform as he prepared for vegetable combat. He looked and sounded cheerful, the west coast version of a good old boy. Juliet suspected he was being deliberately folksy and acting slightly stupid so he wouldn’t bother anyone with poor language comprehension skills.
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