August Moon (10 page)

“Yeah. She was there. Like I told the police, it was like any other practice.”

“Did she seem in a strange mood, or leave with anyone you hadn’t seen before?”

“She was happy Lucy, just like usual. And she left alone. Everyone else there was part of the squad. People used to come watch us practice, until the coach made them stop.” Big warm tears were collecting at the corner of her eyes. “Do you think they’ll find out who killed her?”

“I hope so.” I thought of the terror Lucy must have been in before she was shot. Who took her? Why? I changed the subject before I started to cry myself. “I’m looking for Annika. Is she here?” I knew she wouldn’t be, but it seemed the most natural way to bring her into the conversation.

“No, it’s her day off. She should be here tomorrow, though.”

“Does she ever come in on her day off?”

Lydia nodded. “Totally! She’s the best. Sometimes, when I’m the only one on, she’ll watch the store for me so I can go and grab lunch or run some errands. On her day off! Can you believe it?”

I could. And that would explain why the money missing from the till wasn’t shift-specific. “She’s a real pal.”

“Absolutely. Do you want me to give her a message for you?”
I smiled at her. Her sweetness was infectious, even if it was soaked in her sadness. “No thanks. I’ll just stop back.”

“Okay. Let me know if you need anything else.” She smiled softly and moved off to help a customer in the front of the store, and I filed this situation away as “mystery solved.” Annika was dripping with expensive jewelry she couldn’t possibly afford on this job, and she routinely volunteered to watch the till for her coworkers, the same till that was regularly short on cash. The problem was, I only had assumptions, and like I had told Tina, that wasn’t enough. I decided to suggest to Tina that she be clearer about the rules to her employees—only one clerk using the till per shift—and install a camera in the front of the store. I was sure that would put an end to the stealing without getting anyone in trouble, which had been her goal from the start.

I stepped out of the store and walked back to the library, feeling good about helping Tina. I’d finish a few hours of paperwork, then ask Mrs. Berns and Sarah Ruth to close so I could return to the Bible Camp.

“I’m back!”

Mrs. Berns peered up at me as I sashayed into the library. She was on all fours, looking under the table on which the banned book display rested. “I thought you were just going for a bagel. Did you get laid between here and there? Or maybe a lobotomy?”

“Hunh?”

Mrs. Berns grunted. “I sent you away because you were Crabby Cathy and now you come back Suzy Sunshine. What happened?”

“I ran into some good advice. What are you doing on the floor?”

“Dropped a pencil under here.”

“Let me help you.” I crouched next to Mrs. Berns and reached my hand underneath the table. I came up with two pencils, a magazine insert, and Nut Goodie, the ferret. “What’s he doing down here?” I asked, dragging out the mangy creature.

“Gives me the creeps. It’s a long, dead rat. I tried sticking it in the trash but it kept reappearing behind the counter, so I gave it a time out down here. Probably that angelic Sarah Ruth is the one that kept digging it out.”

“What’s that crack mean?”

“Just that she can never do anything wrong.”

I looked at Mrs. Berns, who was still sporting her six shooters strapped to her waist. She had also rounded up a pair of Fleet Farm cowboy boots and was wearing a snap-front Western shirt undone to halfway down her droopy chest. This was a woman who could do a lot wrong, and I loved her for it. “Sarah Ruth’s just being on her best behavior because she’s new. She’ll mess up soon enough, I’m sure. Where is she, anyhow?”

Mrs. Berns gestured over her shoulder as she pushed herself off the ground. “In the back room. She rushed there when you left for lunch, and I haven’t seen her since.”

“Thanks.” I strolled into the storage room. We had boxes of books accumulated back here, as well as holiday decorations, stuffed animals we rotated through the kids’ section, a bathroom, and next to it, a tiny office whose door was currently shut. The office had room enough for a desk, two file cabinets, and not much else. It was not unusual for Sarah Ruth to be in there getting a handle on the paperwork, but it was unusual for her to do it with the door closed. The library rule was to keep the door open in case you were needed on the floor.

I grabbed the cool doorknob in my hands and twisted, half expecting to see the office empty. Instead, I found Sarah Ruth on the old, black, circle-dial phone, which she shoved down guiltily when I peeped my head in.

“Sorry! Did I interrupt a conversation?”

Sarah Ruth patted her limp brown hair nervously and shook her head. “Wrong number.”

I smiled. “But I didn’t hear the phone ring.”

“Oh, I mean I dialed the wrong number. I was trying to call the
Recall
office, but I got someone’s home number. I know it’s so rude to hang up, but I get too embarrassed to stay on the line once I realize the number is wrong.”

I felt a familiar buzzing along my hairline. Sarah Ruth was lying, but I didn’t know why. “The number at the
Recall
is 864-1298. Anything I can help you with? I still work there, you know.” I tried another polite grin.

“Nothing that can’t wait. I wanted to find out advertising costs. I thought maybe we could run some contest, like having the whole town read the same book at the same time or something. No biggie.” She stood up abruptly and brushed past me on her way out.

I didn’t see anything out of place in the office, so I turned and followed. “Would you mind closing up this afternoon, along with Mrs. Berns? I have to do some research for an article.”

She slowed her pace and seemed visibly relieved that I was no longer asking her about her phone call. “I think we can handle it just fine. Your library will be in good hands with us.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mrs. Berns slitting a hole in one of the bean bag chairs in the kids’ section. She slid Nut Goodie, the ferret, into it, and then began to sew it shut with a heavy-duty needle and thread. “I have no doubt.”

“When are you leaving?” Sarah Ruth asked.

My hairline tingled again. “Not for a couple hours. I need to finish paying some bills, and I wanted to follow up on a grant I wrote for the library. I figured I’d head out to the New Millennium around 3:00.”

“The Bible camp? What could you possibly want there?” Her voice had a sense of urgency before she dialed it down. “I mean, you don’t really go to church, do you?”

“No, I really don’t. But I told Ron Sims at the newspaper that I’d cover the Creation Science Fair this afternoon. Should be a quick in and out.”

She smoothed her plain brown skirt and pulled down her matching, button-front shirt. The woman was always a vision of brownness, and I noticed the humidity making her plain brown perm-curls into kinky waves. “Be careful, Mira. I know how you like to make fun of people, but they’re good folks out at New Millennium.”

I cocked my head. “Then why would I need to be careful?”

“It’s just that disrespecting people can get you into trouble, and I know there is no love lost between you and the Meales.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “I just worry about you, that’s all. And there’s still a murderer out there.”

“If he’s after cheerleaders, I’m not his type.”

“If the killer’s even a ‘he.’ These days, you can never be sure.”

I carried Sarah Ruth’s
disturbing comment in my head all afternoon like poorly packaged dynamite. I had done my best to not think about the murderer, to leave that investigation to the police, but when the image of Lucy Lebowski’s shattered corpse made its way into my brain, I always assumed it was a man who had killed her. I now had to face facts—that a woman could hold a gun and shoot someone in the back just as well as any man.

As I cruised out to New Millennium Bible Camp, my windows down and my radio up, I promised myself I’d keep a good eye on all the women, starting with Alicia Meale, two-faced stealer of biscotti and signer of book-banning petitions. First, though, I’d need to find parking. Cars were parked end to end, all the way up the gravel road to the Bible camp, and the parking lot was as full as a baby’s diaper in the morning. I couldn’t even turn my car around and had to go in reverse all the way out to the blacktop, visions of dinging doors and clipping people blurring my focus. I’ve never been particularly skillful at backing up.

I parked the Toyota on County Road 5, grabbed my notebook and digital camera, and hoofed it back to the main hall of the Bible Camp, the one where I had seen Jesus’ youngest warriors prepping for battle only yesterday. I had no idea what a Christ’s Church of the Apocryphal Revelation Creation Science Fair would look like, but I did have a plan. I was going to eyeball the participants’ goofy projects long enough to bluff my way through a short article, and once I was sure the key players—namely, the Meales—were all accounted for, I was going to slip into their house for a little revelation time. If I was busted, I’d just say I was lost. What could they do to me?

I licked my lips, tasting the salt of a hot day, and walked down into the central area, the church on my right and the main hall on my left. The grounds were packed, with people walking in and out of the cabins and sitting on the submerged benches in the watery pulpit. People around me were celebratory, on their way to faith and fraternity, but there was something odd that I couldn’t immediately put my finger on. When a smiling gentleman next to me removed his hat, I realized what it was: everyone was dressed for a different era—the men in fedoras, button-down shirts, and pleated khakis, the women in dresses that went below their knees. It was as if I had stepped back in time to the Eisenhower years.

I felt conspicuous in my purple sundress, what with my revealed knees and elbows, but I did my best to blend in with the group nearest me. At the front doors of the assembly hall, I accepted a flier from two clean-scrubbed twelve-year-olds in starched shirts and pants. They smiled as sweat beaded their foreheads, giving them a fevered look. The flier was the same one Robert Meale had tried to leave at the library, and so I set it on a free table and got a feel for the place.

It looked like your average grade school cafeteria and smelled like tempera paints and baked French fries. Twelve round tables had been set up in the center of the large main room, six to a row, and each one featured the hallmark of a science project—tri-fold tag board with uneven writing. The room was not air-conditioned, and many of the people packed in were fanning themselves with a flyer. I yanked a notepad and pen out of the small India-fabric purse I looped across my chest, and strolled up to the first table. A teenage boy, his acne pulsating and his eyes bright, was explaining the inner workings of his discovery, using wildly animated hand gestures. A group of elderly folks, some of whom I recognized from the Senior Sunset home, nodded along.

I skirted them and checked out his tag board. “How Noah Used Vertical Integration to Get the Ark Ready in Time.” Only
vertical
was spelled with two “l”s and no “a.” The next table over featured the creation science project, “My Great, Great Grandpa Was a Christian, Not a Monkey.” I leaned in to examine photos of gorillas glued alongside a daguerreotype photo of an old guy, bubble dialogue pointing out the differences. “Gorilla: hairy face. Great, Great Grandpa Matthew: no hair on his forehead.” Several other differences were pointed out. The last fold in the tag board ended with, “Therefore, Evolution Is False.” People were buzzing about that one.

The third table featured a display of rainbows, hearts, and pictures of babies. I didn’t want to read the title, but my eyes betrayed me. “Biology Proves Women Designed for Housework.” The pictographic display showed a smiling woman, her “lower than male” center of gravity pointed out with a two-inch red arrow at each hip, a mop in one hand and a baby in the other. Was I in Stepford? I scurried on to the table devoted to “Thermodynamic Readouts Confirm Satan Is More Active Than Ever,” and quickly moved to a display featuring an anatomically incorrect sculpture of Adam and Eve made out of popsicle sticks and macaroni. I edged over to the teenage girl standing proudly next to it. “This yours?”

She smiled at me. “Yes. It took me three weeks to make.”

I tried not to stare at the large wet spots under each of her armpits. “Wow. That’s a commitment.”

She crossed her hands at her waist. “I am a believer.”

“Say, about that. I’m a reporter for the
Battle Lake Recall
, and I’m doing an article on this Creation Science Fair.”

She stood up tall when I said that and pushed her hair behind her ears. “That’s great! Are you taking any pictures?”

“Maybe.” I had the digital camera around my neck. “What I think the readers will want to know, though, is what exactly is Christ’s Church of the Apocryphal Revelation?”

She looked at me like I had just asked her what that thing on the middle of her face with the two holes was. “You’re at it.”

“Of course. I’m just looking for a quote from someone participating in the Fair. I’ll use your name.”

“It’s Betsy Zimmer.”

“Great.” I wrote it down. “And in your words, what sets Christ’s Church of the Apocryphal Revelation apart from other churches?”

“That’s easy.” She put on her best lecture voice, obviously repeating a litany she’d heard many times. “The Apocrypha were vehicles for God’s word, but they were too profound and too sacred for just anyone to hear. It wasn’t until Pastor Meale got his hands on them, and shared them with us, that regular people could learn them. Now that we’ve heard the word of God through the Apocrypha, it’s our duty to share it with others.”

“You folks use a regular Bible?”

“Totally. That’s God’s instructions to us. But we also have the Apocrypha. It’s like an appendix that Pastor Meale typed up. He’s the only one who has the original.”

“Have you seen the original?”

She gasped. Clearly, my suggestion had been blasphemous. “No. No one has. It’s for Pastor Meales’ eyes only.”

If I hadn’t already planned on some serious snooping at the Creation Science Fair, I’d be clearing my calendar for some down-and-dirty-Nancy-Drewing about now. I was willing to bet a basket of Nut Goodies that that “original” Apocrypha might be just the Meales’ undoing that I’d been looking for. “Thanks for the quote, Betsy! You’ve been a great help.”

“Not at all.” She smiled primly, despite the rivers of sweat coursing down her hairline, and turned to talk to a couple admiring her display.

I moved on to check out the next row of displays. “Using the Lord’s Prayer to Microevolve Bacteria” was diagrammed at the first stall. I shook my head, appalled at the lack of curiosity here, all these bright kids closing their minds to other ways of seeing the world and the people in it. This Apocryphal Revelation was quite the religion, made up of people trying only to prove concepts dreamed up hundreds of years ago by men who had neither the cleverness to envision dinosaurs nor the creativity to imagine airplanes.

“Quite a turnout, wouldn’t you say?”

I whipped around and discovered Pastor Meale standing behind me, looking more gaunt than I remembered. His lips curved in a smile as warm as a leech. “Lots of people, that’s for sure.”

“I take my greatest pleasure in days like today where I can touch the faithful by teaching children to recognize the Truth of the Word of the Lord, and to see His hand on every aspect of their life. Tell me, Mira, are you considering joining our church?”

“Some keep the Sabbath going to church, but I keep it staying at home, with a bobolink for a chorister, and an orchard for a dome.” That Emily Dickinson poem was one of the few I could remember from college. Turns out my entire English degree had come down to this, a $12,833 comeback.

Pastor Meale clearly didn’t think it had been worth the time or money. His eyes hooded themselves, like he was about to slip underwater, and his lips curled down. I was sure he would have begun exorcising me if not for the commotion at the corner farthest from the front door. “That’s Naomi. You remember my wife? She conducts prayer circles for the needy. Possibly she can help you?”

I knew when I was being dismissed and strolled gladly out of Robert Meales’ presence into the rear of the room, away from the rows of displays and crowds of people dressed for the sock hop. Naomi was indeed at the center of a circle of women. She was dressed plainly except for the bright rings on her left hand, and she was seated in her wheelchair, a quilt across her lap on this sweltering day. She was relatively young, in her late thirties or early forties, and I wondered what had put her in the wheelchair.

Her eyes were closed and she was speaking rapidly, in a guttural voice. I couldn’t make out her words, but what she was saying reminded me of the horking sound Luna makes just before she throws up, only Naomi was horking rapidly, and there was an unsettling familiarity to the syntax of her speech. It brought to mind a Pink Floyd album played backward, something an old college friend of mine liked to do when he got high.

“She speaks in tongues.”

I turned to see Christina Sahlberg, the woman who yesterday had escorted me off the grounds, staring reverently at Naomi. “Can you understand her?” I asked.

“Listen not with your ears, but with your heart.”

Both organs heard only horking words. “What does your heart hear?”

“According to the Apostle Paul, ‘For anyone who speaks in tongues does not speak to men but to God. Indeed, no one understands him; he utters mysteries with his spirit.’”

Yup, just what I thought. She couldn’t understand what Naomi was saying either. Fortunately for those of us with just the one tongue, Naomi was winding down. Her speedy grunting was becoming sparse, and her eyes were fluttering. She swooned a little, blinked, and stared right at me.

“Have I been speaking with the Lord?”

“I guess.”

The women around me started applauding quietly. Naomi’s face grew stern. “He has told me that we are not being proper wives to our husbands. ‘Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as it is fit in the Lord. Neither was the man created for the woman, but the woman for the man.’”

Boy, would Mrs. Berns have a field day with that. “Mrs. Meale? I think we all have a right to be here, even without a man.”

She studied me, her eyes glittering. She wasn’t used to being questioned. “Here in this room, or in God’s house?”

“Anywhere. All of us have value.”

The women around me were whispering, but Naomi commanded their attention. “Of course. All of us have value. And if you ever feel lonely, you can turn to God.”

I shrugged and stepped back into the group of women as Naomi started on another mini-sermon. The person next to me was a stranger, a mousy woman standing behind Naomi’s wheelchair. She had kinky permed hair that was a drab brown, no makeup, and a shapeless dress covering her sturdy body. She looked to be in her early forties, and she had terrible posture. Except for her feverishly bright eyes, she struck me as the human equivalent of a paper bag, unassuming, waiting to be filled. What caught my attention was the ferocious intensity with which she stared at the back of Naomi’s head, like she was drowning and Naomi was the sharp end of a sword held out to pull her in.

“Hi,” I whispered. “My name’s Mira.”

The paper-bag woman slid her eyes at me and blushed before returning her gaze, passionate and hungry, to the back of Naomi’s head.

“Do you go to the church here?”

No response.

“Do you live in Clitherall?”

Still no response, but I caught a glare from one of the other women in the circle and took the hint. This was going to be one hell of an article, I tell you. Stepford meets
Hee Haw
. I was beginning to write it in my head while looking for an exit when I ran into my third Meale of the day. Alicia stood in front of me wearing a proper cotton dress that covered her from shins to wrists. Her hair was held back in a tortoise shell band, and she was makeup free. Surprisingly, she wasn’t sweating.