by Jess Lourey
“The Bodies of Two Statesboro Girls Found”
The bodies of Eliza Hansen and Paula Duevel, both 17, were found today, two miles apart. Both teens, missing since August 11, were shot in the back at close range. Neither girl knew each other, and the police are searching for a connection and a motive in their deaths.
I read on, but it was hard through the tears blurring my eyes. It was the reference to their parents that got me. Both sets of families had been searching since the girls had gone missing, and a photographer had captured the agony of Mrs. Duevel when she discovered that her daughter had been found, dead. Her husband was holding her up, and her mouth was open in a silent scream. The photograph made me think of my mother, and how it would crush her if she lost me, too.
My mom had been a dinner-on-the-table-at-five-every-night kind of mom, reliable and ever-present. She had been a part-time seamstress all through my childhood, specializing in sewing on badges and names on letter jackets and sports uniforms. She worked from home. I was never sure if it was so she could keep an eye on me or keep an eye on my dad. For the first time, I wondered what else her life could have been if she hadn’t been saddled with an increasingly drunken husband and bullheaded daughter. It was strange to think of my mom like that, a person separate from me.
I turned back to the article and forced myself to read. The one fact that stuck with me, other than the manner of death, was the appearance of the girls. They were both 5'6" and around 120 pounds, both brunette, and both in their late teens. The physical description almost perfectly matched that of Lucy Lebowski, our dead cheerleader. And, other than the age, Alicia Meale.
The front door donged open, and I looked up guiltily. Sarah Ruth. I swiped the tears from my eyes, logged off the computer, and crumpled up my cow drawing before she made it to the front desk. She slid a glance at me, but didn’t stop.
“Morning, Mira. I’m just going to go hang up my purse and umbrella in back.”
I felt prickly, the tension hanging between us thick and murky like headcheese. I caught a whiff of her as she walked by and was struck by a familiar and masculine undertone to her scent. Where had I smelled that before? And more importantly, “Why do you have an umbrella? It hasn’t rained in weeks.”
“My neighbors assure me that the August Moon Festival tonight is guaranteed to bring a thunderboomer. I always like to be prepared.” Her tinkly laughter was genuine, and I relaxed slightly. At her interview a little over a week ago, Sarah Ruth and I had hit it off right away. Maybe we were both just going through an adjustment period, me moving out and her moving in. I would talk to her and get to the bottom of this, but not right now. Personally revealing conversations were always better conducted in the afternoon.
The door chime went off again, and Mrs. Berns strolled through the front door, wearing her ultra-white old lady tennis shoes, a white unitard, and a swim cap over her bony head. Apricot hair straggled out from underneath. She had the short end of a Power Rangers beach towel pinned around her neck. “Today’s the day!”
I grabbed a tissue from the box on the counter and blew out the last of my grief. “What day, Mrs. Berns?”
“The day me and the superhero have our first date. Do you think he’ll wait until it’s dark to take me for a fly?”
“Hunh?”
“Oh. Maybe you don’t know.” She lowered her voice to a whisper and put her arm around me conspiratorially. “The gentleman taking me to the August Moon Festival tonight? He’s a superhero.”
“Weston Lippmann? He’s the curator of a tick museum.”
Mrs. Berns tsked. “In a cape? Carrying a laser-beamer?”
“What’s a laser beamer?”
“Kinda like a flashlight, but for superheroes. I saw it up beneath his cape when I was hiding that mangy ferret under a table. He carries it in back, tucked in his pants. It’s small and black. Only saw it for a flash. Come to think of it, it might have been a truthenator.”
It occurred to me that Weston might have been carrying a gun, but the idea was too ludicrous. He was a tick curator who wore a cape. Plus, as a native Minnesotan, Mrs. Berns had been around enough guns to recognize one. “Or it might have been a flashlight, or nothing at all. He wears the cape because he doesn’t want birds to poop on him. He doesn’t carry a laser-beamer or a truthenator. He’s a tick museum curator.”
Mrs. Berns nodded. “Probably best you don’t know the truth. You’d give it up too easy if they caught ya. You’ve got the constitution of a newborn. What’re you crying about today, anyhow?”
“It’s allergy season. My eyes water.”
“Two facts don’t make a truth, Mira. I’ll be in back dusting.”
“Fine.”
“Kennie Rogers is looking for you, by the by. I ran into her at the Turtle Stew,” Mrs. Berns said over her shoulder. “I think she was heading over here next.”
Shit! I’d told her I’d come over to her house yesterday morning to look at her great new invention that she wanted me to get in on. “I’m starving. I think I’ll take an early lunch.”
“Thought so. I’ll keep an eye on that moody Sarah Ruth.”
That moody Sarah Ruth was standing beside Mrs. Berns when she said that. I ducked outside and let the two of them work it out. Or not. I stepped into the blazing day, my hair wilting immediately. Waves of fire wafted off the pavement. I walked through the wall of heat, taking the long route back behind the old granary, so I wouldn’t run into Kennie. Including my stop at Olson’s Oil in town, it took me twenty minutes to get to the Senior Sunset and I was sweating like a stripper when I arrived.
The nursing home was built in the 1950s and looked like a cross between a bomb shelter and a high school. The drooping flowers skirting the building did their best to offset the institutional feel, but it was an uphill battle. I ignored the front door and came around to the backside, where I was happy to see a fishing line coming down off the roof.
“Hey, Curtis! You catching anything?” Curtis had lived at the nursing home for twelve years, and he’d been fishing off the roof for just as long. Never mind that there was no water down here, just a neatly manicured lawn, some deck chairs, and a tiny garden plot that I tilled for the residents. His roof-fishing was a harmless pastime, and the nursing home staff usually turned a blind eye to it. Most thought Curtis was a couple face cards short of a full deck, but I knew better.
He peeked over the roof, his bright eyes shaded by the brim of a fishing hat. “Nah. Too hot. The fish like shady, rainy days.”
“I brought you something. Wanna come down and see?”
“Might as well.”
Five minutes later, Curtis Poling was beside me in the shade of a basswood tree, smoking one of the cigars I had picked up for him. He was a rakish, good-looking old guy with cobalt eyes that didn’t miss a beat. Between him and Shirly Tolverson, another nursing home resident, nothing happened in this town, past or present, that they didn’t have a line on.
“Hot day,” I remarked.
“Yup.”
“You think the Festival tonight will bring rain?”
“If not tonight, then soon. You feel heaviness in the air, makes it hard to pull a full breath?”
I inhaled through my nose. He was right. I couldn’t fill my lungs. “Yeah. What’s it mean?”
“It means we’re in for one fury of a storm. I haven’t felt that thickness in the air for weeks.”
“The farmers’ll like that.”
“Not if it comes so fierce that it tears through their crops. But that’s farming. It’s always a gamble.” The small talk out of the way, Curtis graciously led us both to the heart of my visit. “Damn shame about that Lebowski girl.”
“That’s for sure. You know her family?”
“Good people. Her dad’s a potato and dairy farmer out in Clitherall, one of the last ones doing it independently. He owns 160 acres, free and clear.”
“How about her mom?”
“Farm wife. I think she’s a substitute teacher, too.
Lucy was their only child. I heard she was set to go off to college in the fall.”
“That’s what I heard, too. Do you know what church they went to?”
He trained his eyes on me, taking inventory. I held perfectly still. “You want to know if they went to that church out by Clitherall? At the Bible camp?”
“Did they?”
“Hard to say. They’d always been Nordland congregants, but they might have been checking out a new church. The funeral’ll be at Nordland, with Pastor Winter.”
“What do you know about Pastor Winter?”
Curtis cackled. “Are you interviewing me for a story, or just being nosy?”
“Just being nosy.”
“Then you better nose around with Ida. She goes to Nordland. Knows Harvey Winter and his family. He’s from this area originally, you know.”
“I didn’t. Mind if we go track down Ida?” Curtis stubbed out his cigar and led me into the cool shade of the nursing home. As always, the smell set me back a step. It was medicinal and syrupy and got in your hair. We went down the long central hall, cosseted with bland pictures of flowers, and found Ida in her room, her bejeweled reading glasses perched on her tiny nose. She smiled to see me while flirting outrageously with Curtis. I had noted his Elvis-like spell over the senior set on previous visits. I filled Ida in on what I was after.
“They don’t come any nicer than Harvey Winter. His family was one of the first settlers in Battle Lake, you know. Of course, he got around some as a boy, but look what he went on to make of himself.”
“What kind of ‘getting around’?”
“The usual, for back then. Drinking, drag-racing, and getting a little too familiar with the local girls. Nothing that landed him in jail or a wedding chapel. I do remember his parents being worried, but then he went off to seminary.”
“Do you know which seminary?”
“Some place in Wisconsin. I remember because he started out Wisconsin Synod. It wasn’t for him, though. Nordland’s an ELCA church.”
I rubbed the back of my neck, trying to keep the stress at bay. Harvey Winter was from Battle Lake. He was a troublemaker as a kid but went off to seminary. The same seminary as Robert Meale, it turns out. Robert Meale moves to Statesboro, Georgia, where he runs a church for a couple decades. When two teenagers are shot in the back in Statesboro, he packs up his family and moves to Battle Lake, the hometown of his wife’s sister. Here, he finds that his old classmate Harvey Winter is also running a church. Shortly thereafter, a teenage Battle Lake girl is shot in the back. How did it all come together? More importantly, who had killed Lucy, and why?
“What do you two know about the New Millennium Bible Camp?”
Curtis and Ida glanced at each other, and Ida spoke first. “Nothing good, just rumors.”
“What kind of rumors?”
Curtis spoke up. “That group’s just a little too evangelical for this area. That’s all. Supposedly, the minister’s wife talks in tongues.”
I sniffed. “That’s no rumor. I saw her do it, though I’m not so sure it was anything mystical. It seemed like regular speech, but garbled. But if they’re too evangelical for this area, where are they getting all their customers? The place was full up during their Creation Science Fair.”
“There’s always enough people looking for a place to belong.”
“Speaking of, you guys know what Les Pastner has been up to lately?”
“The usual. Running his store and bitching about the government, trying to make everyone forget he’s a short guy with no friends.”
“Not even a girlfriend?”
Curtis ran his hands through his wispy white hair. “Funny you should mention that, and in the same breath as the Bible Camp. Seems Les is dating the sister of the wife of the pastor out there. Everyone knows that. Ever since Les ran for mayor, he’s felt the need to spread the details of his personal life. Says the public has a right to know, but I ask, what about the public’s right to not care?”
Cha-click. A tiny piece of the puzzle fell into place. There wasn’t enough there for me to see a pattern, but I was getting close. “She live out on Hancock Lake?”
“Yes she does.”
“Thought so. I really appreciate your time, both of you.”
Ida clasped my hand. “You come visit whenever you want. It gets boring here.”
Curtis goosed her and winked. “You say that, you make a man feel ashamed.”
Ida giggled. “Nobody would ever call you boring, Curtis Poling.”
They exchanged a warm look, and I took that as my signal to go. I pushed my way through the hot and thick air, Curtis’ prediction about a storm close in my mind. The thought kept my mood upbeat, as did the fruitfulness of our conversation. I tucked away the information about Les, Pastor Winter, and the town’s feelings about the new Bible Camp like it was a treasure map. I just had to figure out how to read it.
Such was my good mood that, back at the library, I walked straight up to Sarah Ruth. “Got a minute?”
She looked at me uncomfortably and then summoned a smile. “This is about the awkwardness between us, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Can you come back into my…um, the office?” I was aware that it would belong to Sarah Ruth in under a week.
“Of course.”
I turned to Mrs. Berns, who was practicing flying off a low counter in the kid’s section. “You watch the place, ’kay?”
“Up, up, and away!”
Back in the office, I chose the position of authority behind the desk. This conversation was going to be uncomfortable, and I needed all the help I could get. “I don’t know where to start.”
Sarah Ruth sat across from me, her posture straight, her hands folded in her lap. I was again struck by her brownness. It wasn’t her skin, which was as pale as bread dough, but it was in her permed hair, her clothes, her overall impression. “I think I do. Ever since you walked in on me on the phone in here, it’s been strained between us.”
“I didn’t exactly walk in on you. I didn’t know you were back here.”
“I know. And I don’t know why I lied about dialing a wrong number. I was actually calling the Bible camp.”
“You can call whoever you want.”
“It’s not that easy. I’ve had God in my life ever since I was a little girl. I’m not ashamed of it, but I’ve learned that it makes other people uncomfortable, even suspicious.” She took a deep breath and looked at me eye to eye. “I have a close and personal relationship with Jesus. I didn’t think you’d understand, so I’ve tried to keep my work life separate from my religious life, but I don’t know if I can do that any longer.”
“How do you mean?”
“I mean that my love of God is an important part of who I am, and I don’t want to pretend otherwise. I don’t want to feel like I have to lie about calling my church, or hide if I see you at the Bible camp.”
I felt a little fire spark up in my rib cage. I messed up enough myself without taking on other people’s mistakes. “Those are choices you made. I didn’t tell you to lie, or hide.”
“Not in so many words, but you have to admit you’re very negative about religion. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, Mira, but I have to tell you you’re incredibly close-minded when it comes to God’s love.”
The fire flared and simmered in my throat all the way to my tongue. “If by close-minded you mean I lack blind faith, you’re absolutely right. But I recognize you’re entitled to your opinion, and your religion. I just don’t happen to share it.”
“Well, we’ll have to agree to disagree.”
I hated that phrase. It was code for, “I know you’re too obtuse to ever see how I right I am, so to get any satisfaction out of this discussion, I’m going to pretend to be more reasonable than you. Oh, and get the last word in.” I stood, my fists clenched, and then sat back down. After a deep breath, I measured my words. “We can definitely agree to disagree about what is a better use of our spare time. We cannot agree to disagre
e about what is appropriate at work. Your religion, or any employee’s religion, doesn’t have a place in the work environment.”
“What about your gardening? That’s important to you, and you talk about it at work all the time. In fact, you’re trying to convince me to take up gardening. How is that different from me talking about religion at work?”
Jesus. I hated it when religious people used reason when it suited them. And they were so good at it. You’d think all those sermons on unquestioning faith, virgin births, and people turned into pillars of salt would have dulled their skills. “You’re right. This is a library, and if free speech isn’t welcome here, it isn’t welcome anywhere. You’re free to talk about your religion at work, and to use the phone during your break time to call whomever you want.”
She grinned like a winner. “Thank you.”
“But,” and I held up my finger, “it’s a two-way street. You need to be open to the interests of our patrons…”
“I always am.”
“I’m not finished. Free speech isn’t just about getting to say what you want. It’s also about knowing when to shut up. This library is not and will never be a conduit for any religion or person. Your job here is to make a wide array of literature available to a broad variety of people. If I ever hear that you’re doing anything else, or limiting options based on your religions beliefs, I’ll get you run out of town if it’s the last thing I do.”
Sarah Ruth’s winner grin wavered slightly, but she kept it on. “Understood.” She stood up and offered me her hand. “We have different methods, you know, but I think we have the same goals. You’re leaving this library in good hands.”
“I’d better be,” I grumbled. I took her hand, shook it limply, and brushed past her. Our discussion seemed to have done her a world of good, judging by the spring in her step and whistle on her lips as she worked throughout the day. For my part, I felt like I had just lost an important fight.
