September Fair Read online

  “Okay, but it might help if the note told us exactly what sort of report we’re looking for.”

  “It’s about an inch thick, spiral bound.”

  My heart grew heavy and icy. “What’s that?”

  “A spiral-bound report. About an inch thick.”

  “Aeon, how do you know that?”

  He looked up from the closet, where he was digging in the back. In the shielded glow of his flashlight, his expression was confused, and then calculating, and then, as if he hadn’t ever had a thought before this moment, completely ingenuous. “That note. It said we were looking for a report that would incriminate Lars.”

  “But it didn’t say how big the report was, or how it was bound.”

  “Oh, my bad. Must be my overactive imagination.”

  As he returned his focus to the rear of the closet, the enormity of my blunder fell swiftly and heavily from the sky, making it difficult to move my body toward the open door of Lars’ office, even though escape was so close. Here I was, a wily woman on the trail of a murderer, and I’d gotten into bed with the enemy. I was so caught up in Kate’s embezzling and Lars’ philandering and Janice’s weirdness, that I’d let Aeon lull me into complacency with his kindness. If he had access to bomb-making materials in his past, he could certainly get his hands on cyanide now. And he clearly had the skills to access Ashley, or the people serving food and beverages to her. As to why? For the same reason he vandalized the college, or freed the cows, or bombed the lab: to bring attention to the cause of animal liberty. What better target than a Milkfed Mary, Queen of the Dairy, representative of the entire Midwest dairy industry?

  I squeezed my eyes shut and visualized moving. It worked, and my right leg shuffled a little, followed by my left. I was two inches closer to the door.

  Aeon backed out of the closet. “You wanna come help me? I think I found something back here, but my hand is too big to squeeze in. Mira?”

  He turned, and our eyes locked. I saw instant comprehension dawn. He straightened quickly, and his movement freed me from paralysis. I dashed to the door and was halfway through before a leg shot out and tripped me.

  “You looking for this?”

  I stared up into a new set of eyes that were in a face that was attached to a neck that was linked to an arm that was holding a one-inch thick, spiral-bound report.

  “Sorry, Mira. You okay?”

  Christine bent down to offer me a hand, but I brushed her away. When you don’t know who your friends are, treat everyone like an enemy. “I’m fine. Where’d you get that report?”

  She pulled it back against her chest. “First, tell me who he is.” She nodded at Aeon, who was balancing between the office door and the dormitory, shifting his weight anxiously from one foot to another. He couldn’t take his eyes off the report.

  “Aeon Hopkins. He helped me break into the office.” I stood and flexed my knee, which I’d skinned in the fall. “You wrote us the note?”

  “I wrote you the note,” she corrected.

  As much as I was on her team when it came to being suspicious of Aeon, there wasn’t time. Something big was happening here, and I needed to know what it was. “Where’d you get that report?”

  “Lars’ office.”

  “And how’d you get the key to Lars’ office?” I backed up surreptitiously, enough so I could see Aeon on my right, still in the doorway, and Christine on my left, each about five feet away.

  Christine stared from me to Aeon and back again. She was struggling with a decision, and I let her. Finally, she sighed and plopped herself on the bed nearest the offices, crinkling the fabric of a blue crinoline dress tossed across the bedspread. “Lars gave it to me. He said he loved me, that he’d leave his wife for me. It’s the oldest line in the book, right? But my girls adored him, and I wanted to believe it, the whole package.”

  “You were dating Lars at the same time as Ashley?”

  Christine scoffed. “Ashley was nothing, a little blonde blip on his screen. I’ve known Lars for two years. I used to be a part-time receptionist at Bovine Productivity Management. It was Lars who convinced me to run for the pageant. Said no one would find out about my daughters, that my being in the pageant would give us more time together. We got plenty of that, here in his office, until Ashley squirmed her way in.

  “That’s why I went after Dirk, that big doofus. I wanted to get back at Ashley, but she could have cared less. She had her eyes on bigger prizes, so I had to get more imaginative.”

  “And you killed her?” I asked.

  “Ha! You watch too much TV. No, I just hid in the closet in Lars’ office and filmed their last boff session with my digital camera. I was going to post it online, but then someone killed Ashley, and I didn’t have any reason to get back at her any more.”

  “But you still wanted revenge on Lars?”

  “Exactly. Hence this report, which he accidentally left in his office after that last time he screwed Ashley. And believe me, he wants it back. He’s been frantic since it’s gone missing.”

  Aeon’s voice was low, growly. “What’s the report say?”

  “Probably nothing you’re interested in. Just a little info about ME, BPM’s best-selling product and Lars’ baby. This past summer, BPM commissioned a private study because of rumblings in the dairy community about the side effects of ME. BPM hoped to set everyone’s fears to rest, but they got bad news. The study found that using ME triples the white blood cell count in the milk, creating a salty product, and in rare cases, causes rapid and irreversible mammary growth when fed to male rats.”

  A picture flashed through my mind: the Bovine Productivity Management representative at the Cattle Barn, the guy who had appeared oddly feminine, but I couldn’t put my finger on why: he’d had man-boobs, and not just the kind fat guys get. He had actual breasts. I coughed.

  “If ME goes down, Bovine Productivity goes down with it. They’ve invested all their capital in that product.” Christine shared this last point with all the satisfaction of a cat who’d caught its mouse. She had Lars just where she wanted him.

  “Give me the report.” Aeon held out his hand. Christine looked at me.

  “I’ll take it,” I said. “I imagine BPM wasn’t going to release it to the press?”

  “This is the only copy there is. I don’t think Lars was supposed to take it off company grounds.”

  A sudden explosion made all three of us jump. The sky behind the wall of windows lit up in a spectacular spray of reds, blues, and greens. The fireworks had begun. “I’m going to get this to the police and inform someone I know at the Pioneer Press about it. Thanks, Christine.”

  “My pleasure,” she said, her eyes sparkling.

  My brain was on overdrive. I had every reason to suspect that Aeon was Ashley’s killer, and I needed to get him out of here so he couldn’t hurt Christine. Then, I’d lose him in the crowds of the fair. All my exploration of the fairgrounds would pay off. There was a police station behind the Space Tower that I’d passed many times on the way to the campground. I’d give the on-duty officers the report and let them find Aeon on their own. I addressed Christine. “What’re you going to do now?”

  “My kids are waiting for me at the fireworks with my mom. We’re going to watch them as a family and then say goodbye to the fair for a long time.”

  “Perfect.” I glanced at Aeon. “After you.”

  He nodded, locked Lars’ door behind him, wiped the knob for prints, and led the way across the dormitory. Christine followed close behind and when I stopped, she almost bumped into me.

  “What?” she asked.

  I turned. On our first meeting, I wasn’t sure if she had been missing eyebrows or if her hair was naturally so pale that they looked invisible. The knowledge I’d gained since then told me it was likely the former, but I wanted to be sure. I hated loose ends. “Can I ask you what happened to your eyebrows?”

  She felt where her eyebrows had been, suddenly self-conscious. “They just fell out. I thi
nk it’s the new Pill I’m taking. I need to ask my doctor to lower the dosage.”

  “I wouldn’t bother. I think Janice Naired your eyebrows while you were asleep, a move she saves for the Milkfed Mary contestants who particularly piss her off. Everyone else, she just pinches a lock of hair or some jewelry from.”

  Christine felt the back of her head and blew an exasperated breath of air. “I should have guessed. I got out of that pageant just in time.”

  “With any luck,” I said, following Aeon down the steps, hopefully the last time I’d have to traverse them. Christine stayed put at the bottom, looking thoughtfully back up the stairs to the dormitory, possibly saying goodbye to a long and unhappy chapter in her life. I continued behind Aeon and out a side door. We had no more time to waste. We found ourselves on Underwood Street, which was less traveled then the main thoroughfares of the fair but still had foot traffic. I gripped the report tightly and kept Aeon a little forward and to my left as we marched toward Judson Avenue.

  “Wait. I forgot my flashlight upstairs.”

  A mental calculation told me Christine would reasonably be out of the building by now. It doesn’t take long to say goodbye to something once you realized you never wanted it in the first place. “I’ll wait for you.”

  He turned, and our eyes grappled. He knew I wouldn’t be here when he returned but he had no way to back down on retrieving his flashlight without exposing himself for the liar that he was. “Thanks, Mira.”

  As soon as he was inside the Dairy Barn, I oriented myself toward the police station behind the Space Tower. This side alley had become disturbingly empty as people streamed toward the fireworks, which weren’t visible between the tall buildings lining the alley. I longed to be back in the safety of crowds. The darkness felt all the heavier because of the sporadic blast of light from the fireworks.

  An eerie wail sounded to my right, and my heart stopped. I had been totally focused on the clear and present danger that was Aeon and hadn’t noticed that the alleyway he’d led us into abutted the Haunted House. All the liquids in my body turned to ice and it felt like the ground was tipping. The horror of seeing Jenny Cot slip to the floor of the haunted house, bleeding and unconscious, descended as I relived the moment.

  From this less-public side, the building looked battered, with siding that didn’t match the front and scrub grass all around. The unfinished appearance lent a particularly sinister element to the building, particularly as another scream emanated from inside, coinciding with an earsplitting explosion of fireworks overhead. I clenched my body and decided for the second time in a day that I wasn’t too proud to run.

  “What’s the hurry?” A deep, breathy voice whispered into my ear at the same time a hand clamped on my forearm, the grip so strong it felt like I’d caught my wrist in a drawer. Something sharp pressed into my back, and fear shot through me like poison. “A girl shouldn’t leave the State Fair without visiting the Haunted House, right? Don’t worry. I’ll come with you. No screams, though, or this ride is over.”

  My brain felt as if it had been dipped in Novocain. I wasn’t aware of walking, but my body was moving toward the deserted rear entrance of the Haunted House. Up close, I recognized it as the door Jenny Cot had been carried out of by the paramedics. I knew that when it opened, a wash of stale air and shrill screams would pour out. I instinctively struggled, but the person holding me tightened their grip on my shoulder and pressed the sharp object hard enough in my back to break the skin. Warm blood trickled down my spine.

  “You’re doing great. Just keep walking. This could be fun.”

  The hand holding me reached forward to open the door. It was gloved, with a denim sleeve buttoned all the way to the wrist. To my left beyond the alley, walking in the brightly lit main street that seemed a mile away, people laughed and strolled, unaware of my terror. I screamed, and one of them, a teenaged boy, looked my way. He was momentarily confused, then smiled and gave the thumbs up when he saw I was entering the Haunted House with someone close behind me. I thought I saw a head of apricot fuzz peeking around behind the teenager, but his was the last face I saw before being plunged into the endless darkness.

  Inside, the essence of the haunted mansion crawled over my body like a million scurrying centipedes. Tears spilled down my cheeks at the visceral terror of returning to the place that had spawned nightmare after nightmare in my teen years. We were in a storage room. I adjusted to the dim glow of the “Exit” sign, and I saw scythes, glowing skeletons, and headless bodies stacked in one corner. In the other, gravestones and jugs of fake blood. A shadow scurried across the floor.

  The small room smelled like dust and mouse pee. Dull percussive thumps reverberated through the walls, indicating the fireworks were still going on outside. Nearby, bloodcurdling screams suggested murder was taking place ten feet away. On the other side of the wall, I heard a chainsaw rev, and I moaned.

  “Sort of a scaredy cat, aren’t you? I’ll take that, by the way.”

  The report was yanked out my hands. I’d forgotten I was even holding it.

  “Why so quiet? You’ve been doing nothing but talking since you came to the fair, as near as I can tell. No point in stopping now.”

  “Who are you?”

  “See for yourself.”

  I turned, slowly, expecting to look upon Aeon grinning like the Joker, a knife in one hand and the report and a bottle of cyanide in the other. Instead, in the dim light of the room, I saw I had been captured by Lars Gunder, a horrible fire glowing in his face. I whimpered. I thought I could see the hint of breasts under his jacket, but it may have been the dim lighting playing tricks on me. “You’ve got the report. That’s what you wanted, right?”

  “I also need the information that’s inside of it. Since it’s now in your brain, I’m afraid I’ll need to take that as well.” He tipped his head and lifted his shoulders, his body language telling me sorry, that’s the breaks, kid.

  All the blood drained from my head and stomach, and I felt dizzy. “I’m not the only one who knows what’s in it.”

  “Christine won’t tell, and I can promise you that Aeon Hopkins is not long for this world. That gnat has been irritating the big boys for far too long. I’ll be swatting him in about, oh, five minutes.” He glanced around. “Killing you in a haunted house is a nice touch, don’t you think? The butter-sculpting booth murder took some planning, but your death will be the scarier of the two, considering the setting. Your body’ll lie here for days before an employee discovers your corpse isn’t a prop. You’ll be smelling by then. That’s what you get for—”

  Without any warning, my body made an executive decision and leapt for the door behind me that led deeper into the haunted house. If it had consulted my brain, it would have been advised to remain in “play dead” mode, to be paralyzed by the knife and hypnotized by the voice of Lars describing how he would kill me. By the time my brain caught up with my body’s rebellion, I was in the murky bowels of the haunted house, pushing past an employee dressed in chains wearing a joltingly childlike mask on his bloodied face and holding a pair of severed ears.

  I lunged ahead until I found myself in a small room. Blood poured down the walls, and in the outline of a door across the room, a dismembered skeleton dropped goopy intestines from one bony hand to another like a macabre Slinky. It was the same room Jenny had hit the floor in. I screamed, and it blended in with the many others, fake and real. A hand clamped onto my shoulder, and I whipped around to face a masked person, my heart beating as loud as a million clocks. I scratched and kicked and ripped the mask off. It was a teenaged boy.

  “Dude, relax. It’s just pretend.” He held me off with one hand and reached for his felled mask with the other.

  I breathed raggedly, peering behind him, expecting my captor to appear in the door at any moment. “How do I get out?”

  He must have been trained to deal with panicked customers. He pointed at the skeleton. “Just squeeze around Mr. Bones.”

  I jumped forw
ard, ripped the skeleton out of the ceiling, and leapt at the drape hiding a metal exit door. I moved the curtain and pushed frantically against the door, but it was jammed. Behind me, the kid who’d given me directions grunted loudly. I swiveled my head to see Lars leaning over him with his knife still out. He hesitated, unsure whether to carve the teenager or pursue me. In that moment of indecision, I gave up on the door and charged into Lars, catching him off guard. He lost his balance momentarily but righted himself by grabbing at my hair. My head yanked to the side as he ripped out a chunk, but I didn’t slow, desperate to put distance between him and me. I ran, careening off of people, charging blindly from one room of the haunted house to another. Behind me, I heard the steady thump of pursuit and people yelling at someone to watch out.

  Breath ragged in my chest, I found myself back in the storage room Lars had first pulled me into. I made for the door just as it opened, and Mrs. Berns peeked her head inside. “Mira? What the hell is wrong with you? I saw you come into here with some guy, but I know how frickin’ scared you are of this place. Don’t lie to me. It was written on your face plain as mud when we walked past here.” She pulled herself into the room and let the door close behind her.

  “There’s no time! We have to get out of here! It’s Lars, he’s …”

  He caught me before I could finish the sentence, snaking one strong arm around my neck, pressing his knife into my jugular with his other. Mrs. Berns bolted forward, but he lashed out, striking her hard across the face with the butt of his knife. She fell to the ground, bleeding copiously from her forehead. She landed on her stomach, unconscious, her face to the side. Blood pooled around her, but Lars’ grip was too tight. I couldn’t reach her. I thought I smelled a hint of almonds, and then a wet rag was pressed against my nose and the world went black.

  The smell woke me. It was an overwhelming stench, like pounds of festering hamburger rotting in a swamp. The feculent odor was so strong it thickened the air, making it difficult to breathe.