September Fair (12 page)

Kate stepped away from me. “The concert was very good. I hate to be rude, but it’s been a very long day. If you don’t mind?”

I thought she was going to leave, but instead, she turned her back to me and began whispering to the man who was digging into his plateful of buffet food. I traveled back to Mrs. Berns, remembering where I knew him from. He was the same guy Janice had been speaking to at the bottom of the dorm stairs on Saturday, while the police were still on guard. He must be an employee of the fair. When I reached Mrs. Berns, I subtly leaned over to yank the dangling underwear free, shoving them into her purse. “When will Neil get here?”

“Addicted, ain’t ya? Told ya’ so.”

Suddenly, the room grew quiet, and we heard that sweet, booming voice of the sexy man in the black button-down shirt. His laughter filled the hall as he neared us, and it was almost enough to distract me from the agitated conversation Kate was involved in on the other side of the room.

I woke up relatively
happy, considering that I was covering the murder of a teenager and a few days earlier I’d rebuffed the advances of the hottest guy to ever utter my name. That aside, I had enjoyed an amazing concert the night before and left the after party early, without imbibing and after briefly meeting the charming and utterly sexy Mr. Neil Diamond. Last night’s dancing must have exhausted me in a cleansing way, because I’d slept like the dead, waking up around nine a.m. on the pull-out couch with a warm yellow sunbeam across my face. Kennie was still sleeping on her bed across from mine, and I assumed Mrs. Berns was doing the same in the back bedroom.

Stretching like a kitty before rising, I snuck to the showers for a quick rinse and tooth brushing, pulled on the navy blue tank top and cut-off shorts I’d brought with me, dropped my toiletries and pajamas under the trailer so as not to risk waking the ladies, and set off to catch a Metro bus to the West Bank. My plan was to visit my old hunting grounds and exorcise some demons before taking in the crown-passing ceremony at the Dairy building later today. As I walked along, the balmy late-summer sun was behind me one hundred percent.

This trip to the State Fair had been my first return to the Cities since I’d left for Battle Lake last spring. That was an easy fact to forget because I’d been isolated in the biome that was the fair since I’d arrived. A person had everything she needed here—food, community, water, showers, bed. There was absolutely no reason to leave, and as I did, I realized the State Fair was just another small town, much like Battle Lake. That thought made me apprehensive to step outside the gate and into the
gesellschaft
that was Minneapolis/St. Paul. I’d changed a lot since I’d left last March, but was it a change for the better?

I kept my face to the glass of the MTC bus as it puttered down Como, heading west. Forty-five minutes later, I recognized the familiar businesses of Riverside Avenue. I’d worked here, in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood, for almost ten years before escaping to Battle Lake. I pulled the stop cord and stepped out tentatively, not sure what I was expecting to find.

The area had been a hippie hangout when I’d left, a throwback culture with a flavor reminiscent of a 1990s Grateful Dead concert, peopled with a generation clinging on to something they’d never known. The Riverside Café had taken up most of the block with its usually vegan and more frequently flavor-free dishes. Chili Time Café had been across the street, patronized by college freshman dabbling in Marxism. Patchouli and Nag Champa incense were the scent of choice outdoors, and street musicians wandered in all weather. Now, both restaurants were gone, one replaced by an Ethiopian grill and the other sitting empty. I smelled curry and cigars, and the scarves and India print skirts had been replaced by suits and burqas, but the place still had the same energy. There was room to be different here. The diversity of color and appearance let me relax in a way I couldn’t in a small town, a fact I’d forgotten in my rural isolation. My shoulders eased a little.

I strolled past the empty windows of the Riverside Café, toward Perfume River, the Vietnamese restaurant I had waited tables at for many years before answering the siren song of Battle Lake. The outside was still painted salmon and yellow, two bay windows leading into a narrow restaurant that had room for only three rows of tables, seven tables deep. I pulled the door open and smiled to hear the same tinkling bell, the familiar scent of lemongrass and curry washing over me.

I’d hoped Alison would be working the lunch shift, but she was nowhere in sight. I stood at the front counter and waited for someone to come from the rear of the restaurant, where the kitchen and wait station were. A teenage girl appeared, wearing the requisite black skirt, white shirt, and tie. I recognized the bow tie. It was the one we all fought over because it was the only clip-on and didn’t constrict your throat like the real ones.

“Hello. Can I help you?”

“Is Alison working?”

She smiled prettily. “Sorry?” Her Vietnamese accent was faint.

“Alison Short? The manager?”

“Oh, she doesn’t work here anymore. My family bought the restaurant in May. The food still is very good, though. Would you like to see a menu?”

I peeked around her, peering at the kitchen behind the glass of the waitress station. I saw one man chopping vegetables and another stirring a steaming soup pot. I didn’t know either of them. “Maybe later. Thanks.” I shoved my hands in my pockets and retreated quickly. I took a left out the door and walked north toward Washington Avenue, in the direction of my old loft apartment above an Indian restaurant. I still dreamt about that place, with its three doorless rooms and ten-foot windows. When I lived there, I shared a bathroom with the guy next door, but it’d worked fine as he kept to himself. I didn’t know what I was looking for returning to the apartment. Maybe a banner proclaiming I had made the right choice in leaving?

As I crossed the Washington Avenue Bridge toward my old abode, a young woman walked toward me. She was about my height, with long brown hair. Her head was down, but there was something familiar about the way she carried herself. As she drew closer, I noted the short-sleeved white blouse she was wearing over a dark cotton skirt. She had on comfortable black shoes. Her only break from the uniform was a dramatic amber ring on the middle finger of her right hand. When we passed, she didn’t look up, and I didn’t say anything because I’d suddenly realized who she was: me, a year ago.

I spun around abruptly, following her toward the West Bank. I pushed down the anxiousness that rose in me when she turned into Perfume River to start her shift. I didn’t look in because I knew what she’d do next: go into the back room. Punch in. Say hello to the cooks. Slip on her apron and tie, cursing the other waitress for getting the good one. Begin to fold silverware in paper napkins until customers arrived. Dream of a different life.

I blinked rapidly and crossed Riverside against the light. That put me in front of the 400 Bar, which had been another favorite hangout. I’d danced to a lot of bands and drank a lot of vodka there. The bartenders and bouncers had known me by name, and that was the shameful truth. I considered coming back to the bar later tonight, when it was open, to confirm with someone that I had in fact once lived here and was not disposable or easily replaced, but what does a person do at a bar if they don’t drink?

A bus stopped in front of me with a pneumatic wheeze and huff of exhaust, and I stepped in, pausing to look around one last time before the doors closed behind me. I felt oddly unrooted, vulnerable, but also free. It was a lonely, scary feeling, like the bird who doesn’t know what to do when her cage door is opened. The world was pretty big. It was too much to fit in my head, and as if in reflection of my mood, the sun crept behind the clouds and a deep rumble echoed along the sky. The humid temperature dropped noticeably.

I forced my thoughts to shift focus. I didn’t like the unmoored feeling. More importantly, there was nothing I could do about it. What I
could
do was find out who had killed Ashley Kirsten Pederson. And if I succeeded, people would realize they needed me.

In a few hours Lana would be officially crowned Milkfed Mary, Queen of the Dairy, and get her beautiful young head enshrined in Grade A, unsalted butter. Hopefully, she wouldn’t also get it handed to her by the same person who had offed Ashley. I had been lax in not yet successfully tracking down Lana to question her about Ashley’s murder and to make sure she felt safe herself. I would fix that. I would also phone Mrs. Pederson to see how she was doing and if she had any new information, including, if I could swing it without further damaging her, asking her if she knew what poison had been used to kill her daughter.

Yes. The relief of a plan.

Today was the day the Dairy building’s doors would be swung wide to the public, but the operation was nearly four hours behind schedule. The sign out front said, “Open Soon!” and workers were scurrying in and out setting up the stage for the passing of the crown and stapling extra twinkle lights onto the butter-carving booth.

I followed one of them into the building and kept to the perimeters so as not to attract attention. Those on the job were intent on their tasks, like ants working feverishly to beat a rainfall. I knew they needed the ceremony this afternoon to go smoothly. One slip-up, and the Milkfed Mary pageant would be considered certifiably cursed, years of positive publicity for the dairy industry down the drain. Right now, Ashley’s death could be written off as an aberration, but a second event, even something like a nerve-jangling squeal of feedback on the mic or the booth not rotating, and it’d be all over. Someone would be forced to develop a new, less-cursed gimmick, like a Prince Gouda, King of Dairy-Based-Fooda contest. See how hard that’d be? No, they needed to make certain the new queen was installed without a hitch.

“Excuse me,” I asked a worker with an armful of carving tools. “What time is the ceremony supposed to start?”

He tried to look at his watch, but it was too buried under his armload. “Three o’clock. Then the butter-carving starts at 3:15 sharp. Let’s hope no one dies.”

Very blunt. He must not be from around here—and by here, I meant the Midwest. I raised my eyebrows and nodded in agreement and let him go past. I glanced around to see if there was anything else I needed to know before the place started filling up with the general public. The cavernous building was extra spic-and-span, but otherwise, everything seemed as it was when I first was here, five days previous. Including, I noticed, the sponsorship banner touting the Bovine Productivity Management group over the top of the carving booth. I hadn’t noticed it when I’d covered Ashley’s ceremony because it blended with all the other signs strung about touting the dairy industry. Plus, I hadn’t been looking for it. Now that I knew that Ashley may have been dating an older man with a Swedish-sounding name who worked for the company sponsoring the pageant, it became important. Yanking out my pad and pencil, I copied down the company’s name, website address, and phone number.

Satisfied to have a focus other than my own life, I snuck out the back of the building, intending to return to the trailer to grab a jacket and my camera before returning to snag a good position for the crowning ceremony. The temperature had dropped precipitously since this morning, and the smell of ozone in the air promised a doozy of a thunderstorm this afternoon or evening. An argument about forty feet to my left, in the shadows where the Dairy building abutted the Go Kart lanes, attracted my attention. The spot was loud and littered with cigarette butts and empty cups. I had to squint as I adjusted to the outdoor light, but I didn’t need my eyes to know that this fight was ugly.

“I told you to shut the fuck up about it,” the man with his back to me raged. He was short, maybe 5’8”, with dark hair. “I’ll get the goddamn money.”

He was talking to a woman, the side of her face and the wicked grip he had on her left arm visible to me. I stepped closer, alerting them both to my presence. He clammed up, releasing her arm and marching off, sticking to the shadows and never turning to look who I was. That left Kate Lewis, the woman he had been threatening, alone and facing me. She stepped out of the shadows, pulling down her sad, rumpled blazer and covering the bare belly peeking through her untucked shirt. They must have been tussling before I’d happened outside for her to have been so exposed.

“Hi,” she said, holding her hand out as she walked toward me. Her eyes were unfocused. She recognized me, but wasn’t immediately sure from where.

“Hi. We were both at the concert last night.” I wondered if the man who had just left was the same guy who was backstage with her. There was no way to be certain.

“Of course.” She clasped my hand, not releasing it for several seconds.

“Are you all right?”

“Fine. How are you enjoying the fair?”

She was obviously embarrassed, so I allowed her change of subject. “It’s great. I’m having a great time. And you?”

“I love the fair.” She patted her hair and yanked at her jacket again. “I’m afraid I have to run. Big day here, you know.” She smiled distantly and stepped into the Dairy building.

I waited until she was out of sight and then jogged out the alley and into the main traffic, which is where the guy who had been hassling her had gone, but he’d been swallowed up by the crowd. I followed the flow back to the Silver Suppository. First grabbing my toiletries from under the front steps where I’d left them this morning, I entered the trailer. “Hello?” No answer.