September Fair (14 page)

His mouth tightened around the edges, but he kept his delivery cordial, slipping back into the super-smooth P.R. voice he’d used at the ceremony. “Not if you’re quick. I’m here with my family and like to keep them separate from my work. Battle Lake is Ms. Pederson’s hometown, if I’m not mistaken. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you. Had you met Ashley?”

“Of course. I know all the girls in the pageant. It’s part of my job as marketing director at BPM. At least, it is this year. This is the first time we’ve sponsored the pageant.”

“Well then, I’m sorry for you as well for the tough situation this must put you in. Has it generated a lot of bad publicity?”

“Too soon to tell, but I shouldn’t think so. Ashley’s death is an unfortunate situation, but it’s not tied to our company.”

“What exactly does your company do?”

“Support farmers. We help them to grow their stock in a sustainable fashion, getting the most productivity out of their cows as possible.”

“That sounds interesting,” I lied.

He glanced around, obviously trying to get rid of me before his family came out of the bathroom. “It really is. If you’d like, I can give you a tour of the factory tomorrow.”

What was I going to say? “That’d be awesome. Thank you.”

“No problem. Just show up before noon and ask for me at the front desk.”

He didn’t tell me where they were located, and I didn’t ask because I already knew. “Great. Thanks for your time.”

He nodded and excused himself as his wife and daughters walked toward us. I took off toward the Dairy building for my first meeting with the elusive Lana Sorensen.

Turns out it takes
a crazy long time to carve a head out of butter. It was nearly nine o’clock before Lana exited the booth, whole and alive but looking like she had just spent six hours in a rotating refrigerator with no bathroom breaks. The press, who had earlier packed the Dairy building, were no longer around. In fact, not many people remained, at least up close to the booth, and Lana and the sculptor’s descent was anticlimactic. Out of habit, I stayed back and watched as Janice strode up to Lana in front of the blue curtain and patted her hair into place. The motion seemed more possessive than affectionate.

After every one of Lana’s hairs was in its approved location, Janice gave a curt nod to the sculptor and led her charge out with one arm over her shoulders and the other grasping her elbow. They beelined to the dormitories, and I hung back, waiting until they were out of sight to follow up the stairs. Janice’s gravelly voice floated down toward me.

“… very well tonight. But would it have killed you to smile?”

Lana murmured something in return, and Janice spoke again. “Well, it’s done now, so I don’t suppose it matters. Just remember, if you say one word, the whole thing is lost. And who does that help? No one. But it’ll hurt plenty.”

My foot slipped down the face of a stair, and I banged my shin, drawing an abrupt halt to the conversation on the top floor. So much for stealth. I pattered quickly back down the stairs and toward the center of the barn. Blending in with the crowds and the cows, I kept one eye on the entrance to the second floor as people milled in front of me. Sure enough, Janice came down and cast a suspicious glance around the Cattle Barn. I ducked behind a milking machine display. When I looked up again, I caught her red jacket slipping out of the barn, her purse in her hand. I waited for ten full minutes before darting back up the stairs, cringing at the bruise I could feel swelling on the front of my leg.

I knocked on the closed door at the top of the stairs. “Lana?”

“Come in.”

She was the only girl in the dorm, and she was sitting in front of a vanity wearing sweats, still in the heavy makeup from the ceremony. Next to her rested an uneaten peanut butter sandwich on white bread. She was leaning forward and removing her contacts when I entered, and she glanced at me without interest before returning to her task. “Did Janice send you to keep watch on me?”

“No. My name is Mira.”

“Lana.” She reached for a pair of glasses as thick as hockey ice and slid them on her nose. They transformed her from a nubile beauty queen into an earnest primary school teacher. “What can I do for you?”

I’d heard of people who rehearsed conversations beforehand. I wrote myself a mental note to be one of those people when I grew up. “I’m a friend of Christine’s.” The sideways lie felt sticky coming out of my mouth. Lana struck me as a straightforward, likeable person.

“She’s not here.” She indicated the room behind her.

“I know. She told me that Ashley stole your boyfriend.”

Lana reappraised me, her eyes as big as moonstones behind her glasses. “You’re that reporter from Battle Lake. Christine told me about you.”

She had a natural shit-cutter. I’d had to work years to develop mine. Now I really liked her. “Yeah, that’s me. Ashley’s mom asked me to find out what happened to her daughter. From what I gather, Ashley was generally a pain in the ass, but she was all her mom and dad had. Do you know what happened to her?”

Lana turned to fiddle with a pot of lip gloss in front of her. “I know she was poisoned, but I don’t know who did it, if that’s what you’re asking.”

I didn’t respond, and after a handful of uncomfortable seconds, she filled in the space between us. “She did steal Dirk, I suppose, but he didn’t put up much of a fight. Anyhow, he wasn’t worth killing anyone over. Besides, where would a farm girl like me get poison?”

“I don’t know where anyone gets poison.” She didn’t respond, so I continued. “Can I ask you something?”

“You already have.”

I smiled. “This is even more personal. You don’t seem like the beauty queen type. You’ve got the looks, but you’re way too no-nonsense for the job.”

She laughed, but it was a melancholy sound. “I ran to help out my family. I never cared if I won or not.”

“Help your family how?”

“To make my mom proud. To bring good press to the farm. The usual.”

“Why do you think Ashley entered the pageant?”

Lana sighed. “I think she’s one of those girls who just needs attention. She’d shrivel up and die if she didn’t have it.”

I didn’t point out that Ashley’s fame hadn’t done her any favors in the staying alive department. I was just happy that Lana was opening up. “I heard from a few people that Ashley was seeing an older guy, probably someone from Bovine Productivity Management. You know anything about that?”

“Yeah. She was fooling around with Mr. Gunder.”

“You sure? He’s married with kids.”

“Sure as I have eyes on my face.” She blinked the magnified googlers for effect.

“Is that what you and Janice were talking about when I came up here? The secret that you shouldn’t let anyone know about?”

Her enormous blue eyes turned chilly, and I lost any edge I had won. “That’s none of your business.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I really am. I’m just trying to help Ashley’s mom.”

Lana studied me, finally making some quiet decision. “Look, one thing has nothing to do with the other,” she said, her voice soft. “The secret Janice was talking about is not connected to Ashley’s death. I promise you that.”

Knowing possibly less than I had since the day had started, I thanked her and returned to the trailer to type up a draft of the second Ashley article I had promised Ron. There was no sign of Kennie or Mrs. Berns.

The Passing of the Crown

Ashley Pederson secured Battle Lake’s place in the state history books when she was crowned the 54th Milkfed Mary, Queen of the Dairy, making Battle Lake the home of more Milkfed Marys than any other city. That pride turned to sorrow when Ms. Pederson was poisoned during the opening ceremony of the Minnesota State Fair.

At a ceremony on Tuesday honoring Ms. Pederson, Janice Opatz, Milkfed Mary chaperone, had this to say: “[Ashley] was a beautiful girl, inside and out. She cared deeply for those around her.” Lars Gunder, a representative for Bovine Productivity Management, the sponsor of the Milkfed Mary pageant, said, “We … were deeply saddened when Ashley Pederson of Battle Lake died shortly after being crowned the 54th Milkfed Mary.”

Lana Sorensen, Carlos, Minnesota, native and first runner-up in the pageant, received the title of Milkfed Mary in a somber passing of the crown.

The article was embarrassingly short.

Wednesday morning, Mrs. Berns
and Kennie caught me. They had stacked beer cans on the floor under my bed, and so when I tried to sneak out like I had for the previous mornings, I made a huge clatter. Mrs. Berns rushed out of her room, hair askew and face smudged with sleep, and Kennie sat up in her bed across the trailer and stared triumphantly at me. Well, as triumphantly as someone can stare when one of her eyes is mascaraed shut.

“Thought you’d get away again, missy?” Mrs. Berns cackled. “Leaving before we’re awake and being asleep like a rock when we get in?”

I was counting the beer cans at my feet. “It looks like you two are doing just fine without me.”

“That’s not the point. This was supposed to be a fun ladies’ week,” Kennie piped in.

“I didn’t get that memo.”

“Consider yourself informed in person. Mrs. Berns and I have made some exciting discoveries at the fair, opportunities very few people know about, and we’re going to show them to you today.”

I gingerly stacked the beer cans into a garbage bag to bring to the recycling bin. “Can’t. I have appointments. Some of us are working here.”

“Tonight. We’re meeting right out front of the International Bazaar at five o’clock. You’ll be free then,” Mrs. Berns said confidently.

She was right, of course. My only plans were to check out Christine as she posed this morning and then head to the tour of BPM before noon. And I wouldn’t mind hanging out with Mrs. Berns, but Kennie was a lot of work on a good day. I enjoyed my own company enough that I didn’t feel the need to socialize with people who exhausted me. Catching my hesitation, she sweetened the pot. “I found the super spiciest food on the planet right here at the fair. I’ll buy supper, and then we’ll show you what else we found.”

Ah. She knew me too well. Food so spicy that it made my eyes water and my nose feel like it had been bored with a drill dunked in battery acid was my new vice, now that liquor was taboo, and I hadn’t found anything to sate it at the fair, not even the spiciest hot sauce at the Jamaican booth. And if Mrs. Berns was getting along with Kennie, who was I to judge? Besides, I didn’t really have a choice. These two knew where I lived. “Fine. Five o’clock, in front of the Bazaar.”

“You won’t be sorry!” Kennie trilled.

“I already am. Hey, which one of you pinched my digital camera?”

“Hunh?”

“My camera. I kept it under this bench, in a soft case, and now it’s gone. I scoured the whole trailer looking for it.”

“I didn’t take it,” Kennie said.

“Me neither. Last I saw it, you were coming back from Ashley Pederson’s fresh corpse, telling me about how you had seen something funky in a photo and you were going to enlarge it on your computer. Did you ever do that?”

A simultaneous explosion of memory and fear met in my brain, creating a sulfurous smell. “You sure neither of you has my camera?”

They shook their heads in the negative. “You think somebody stole it, somebody who wanted to know what you saw when you snapped Ashley’s last minutes?”

Mrs. Berns was reading my mind. I nodded. “But
I
don’t even know what I saw.”

“Who else knew you took those pictures?”

“Who didn’t? I told Ron Sims, a reporter from the
Pioneer Press
that I met up with at the press conference …” My mouth went dry. “I think I mentioned something to Kate and Lars backstage at the Neil Diamond concert, too.”

“Who’s Lars?”

“He works for the company sponsoring the Milkfed Mary pageant, and there’s a good chance he was sleeping around with Ashley.”

Mrs. Berns whistled. “I like a good thrill myself, but you got a death wish, honey. Why you like to swim with the sharks, I’ll never know. You better watch your back.”

I would have answered her, but I was already out the door, bag of clanking beer cans in hand, to change out of my pajamas and brush my teeth before heading over to the Dairy building to watch Christine and the sculptor spin in the booth. Things were getting complicated.

Pretty, tall, flaxen-haired Christine Taylor was now the first runner-up in the Milkfed Mary, Queen of the Dairy contest, having also been promoted by Ashley’s death. She didn’t draw as big of a crowd as the first and then second queen, but a steady group of fairgoers moved in and out of the Dairy building. As I watched Christine rotate slowly in the refrigerated booth, I wondered what crazy Minnesotan mind had invented the idea of whittling a person’s head out of butter. If you were debating which dairy product would make the best medium for head carving, sure, I can understand choosing butter, but how do you even
arrive
at that bizarre point in a conversation?

The intricacies of the dairy world escaped me, but imagining them freed my brain enough to reprioritize my list of duties for the day: I still didn’t know a thing about the sculptor. As the last person to see Ashley alive, in fact the one who had been trapped in a tiny spinning room with her at the moment she had died, she was a likely suspect. I made a note to speak with her after today’s session, something I was sure the police had already done. And the fact that she was still at work spoke to their belief in her innocence, but I wasn’t going to leave any butter pat unturned.

A familiar voice to my left caught my ear. It was Janice, conversing with a woman her age and two small children. She was viciously squirting disinfectant gel on her hands as she spoke. I sidled closer, hoping to eavesdrop, but Janice’s sixth sense warned her I was near.

“Mira. How are you?” Her eyebrows arched, making her look both years younger and pissed. She dropped the gel into her purse and massaged it into her hands. The acrid smell assaulted my nostrils.

“Fine, thank you. Christine’s doing great up there.”

“Thank you,” the other woman said, holding out her hand. “I’m her mother.”

Janice’s eyebrows darted back down, and she relaxed her body language with some effort. “If you’ll excuse me? I have work to do.”

As Janice stalked off, I noticed for the first time that she had a small chunk of hair missing in back. Her shoulder-length, helmet-like tresses were dark and glossy, making it hard to distinguish one area from another, but there was definitely a tiny ragged spot where one layer had been sliced shorter than the rest, about a centimeter across. I wondered if Janice knew about her shitty haircut, but she was out of sight before I could ask her. I turned back to Christine’s mom and took her proffered hand. “Pleased to meet you. You must be proud of your daughter.”

“Very.”

“So where’re you guys from?”

“Hibbing originally, but Christine lives in White Bear Lake now.”

I was surprised. “Milkfed Mary contestants aren’t all newly graduated seniors?”

“Nope. They need to have graduated high school and can’t be more than twenty-four years old. Christine’s twenty-two, so she’s the oldest one this year.”

Knowing Christine was eight years younger than me made me feel old, not to mention cheated. She really could have bought her own beers the other day; she had been using my money, not my ID. “And who are these two?” I asked, indicating the giggly, towheaded children with her.

“My grandkids. Christine’s nieces. The whole family will be in and out at some time today, including my husband. We had to hire extra help to run the dairy farm while we were away, but this is important. We’re all thrilled to bursting about Christine’s placing in the pageant.”

It was the second time she made the point, and when I gave her my full attention, I read her earnestness. She was a simple-looking woman in worn blue jeans and a shapeless yellow T-shirt with a smiling cat on the front. From the little I knew of family dairy farming, it was one of the most time-consuming jobs on the planet, requiring early mornings, late nights, and constant attention to your herd. Christine’s mom’s calloused hands supported my theory that she was a hard worker. To have her daughter up there getting all this attention, the picture of milkfed goodness, must be a highlight to her life. “You should be,” I said. “Will you excuse me? I have to get to an appointment. I just wanted to stop by and say hi to Christine.”

“Nice to meet you.”

“You too.” I turned, shooting Christine a wave as I passed her. She grinned and waved back just before the booth turned her away from me. That’s when I saw she was missing a curl of hair from the exact same place as Janice.