August Moon: A Murder-By-Month Mystery © 2008 by Jess Lourey.

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For Jen, who treats me like her little sister

even when I don’t deserve it.

As I brushed my hair for the seventh time, I made a deal with myself. If Johnny knocked on my door tonight, I would open up to him like a lilac on a golden May morning. If he didn’t show, I was packing it up and moving back to Minneapolis to join a nunnery or finish my grad program and become a dried-up, cat-collecting, fist-shaking, asexual English professor. No one could claim I hadn’t given Battle Lake a chance, not after what I’d been through the last three months. But oh, did I hope that Johnny would do right by me tonight.

While I waited, I tried reading an old copy of Vanity Fair magazine that I had recycled from the library, but I didn’t even have a sufficient attention span to follow Christopher Hitchens’ latest rant. A Frasier rerun on my grainy TV was no more engaging. I settled on spending most of the early night beaming at my animals. Johnny Leeson was coming to my double-wide tonight!

My long dark hair was loose and natural. Except for the wisp of mascara around my gray eyes and shiny, honey-flavored gloss on my lips, I was makeup free. I didn’t want to do the Mary Kay bait-and-switch, where you are all curled hair, smoky eyes, and sultry lips at the beginning of the make-out session and scary, oven-baked clown face at the end. With me, what you saw was what you got, which might explain why there weren’t a lot of men seeing and getting in my life. Johnny had spent time with me at my worst, though, from inarticulate and dorky to bruised and battered, and he had still asked to come over tonight. I hoped our transition from friends to lovers would be a smooth one. I had tried the relationship conversion before and found it to be like that moment when you stroll onto the dance floor and shift from walker to dancer—if you think about it too much, you mess it all up.

I watched anxiously through the kitchen window for his headlights to appear down the driveway and pushed open all the windows on the back of the house so I would hear his car if I didn’t see him approach. I breathed in deep the spicy woodsmoke-and-zinnias scent of Minnesota in July and listened to the clock tick a happy beat. Johnny Leeson was going to be with me tonight! I moved from the couch to the kitchen table and then to the edge of my bed, where I tried reading a book. When the clock ticking began to sound a little too much like Chinese water torture, I slid a CD onto my stereo. I blipped through Sting, the Indigo Girls, and Gillian Welch before I figured Norah Jones would convey the desired attitude of suave aloofness and cool availability that I was after.

The moody jazz, however, soon became monotonous, and then taunting, as the minutes ticked off the clock and fell to the floor like gravestones. At first, I consoled myself by recalling that Johnny had simply said “tonight,” and not given a specific time. Tonight means different things to different people. I kept my optimism revved for nearly an hour after that before I moved on to worrying. Johnny was a decent guy, and he would have called to cancel if he could have. By eleven p.m., however, I was darkly pissed.

I stabbed the “stop” button on my CD player and blew out the beeswax candles that had been melting toward extinction. Apparently, Johnny had had second thoughts. Fine. That’s fine. A romantic evening with him probably would have had a terrible ending anyhow, with me discovering that he was a lousy lover, or a collector of fingernail clippings.

That’s what I was telling myself as I walked past my front door, angrily ripping off the cute rainbow T-shirt I had chosen just for the occasion, the one that made me look like I had boobs. When, I wondered fiercely, would interactions with men stop being excruciating experiences I had to learn from, instead of nurturing relationships that I could grow in? I rubbed itchy tears from my eyes, angry for even getting my hopes up. I should have known from the start. Relationships and me went together as well as dark chocolate and sauerkraut. A cloister loomed in my future, or maybe a job teaching English at a rural technical college.

That’s when the first knock came. I jumped away from the door and yanked my T-shirt over my head. I hadn’t heard or seen a car. Then came a second knock, and my heart and loins did a mighty leprechaun kick. The person on the other side of this door was going to decide whether I returned to Minneapolis/St. Paul to pursue a thrilling career in the English language arts, or stayed in Battle Lake, wrapped in the loving arms of Mr. John Leeson.

Instead of waiting for the third knock, I ripped the door open, naked hope in my eyes. The hope quickly turned to shock, and then confusion. Actually, I shouldn’t have been surprised at the body in front of me. This was Battle Lake, after all. Anything can happen here, and it usually does.

“Kennie?” At first I thought she had gotten in a paintball fight, but then I realized she had been crying so hard that her bountiful makeup was running riot over her features. See? Oven-baked clown face finds the habitual makeup wearer every time. You’re better off facing the world with an honest mug.

“Yeah.” She pushed her way past me, tripped over Luna, my now-growling dog, and didn’t give my cat, Tiger Pop, a glance. If she had checked him out, I’m pretty sure she would have seen he was smiling. He likes drama. “What you got to drink?”

Oh, oh. The only thing worse than Kennie without an accent was Kennie on a bender. I had gotten to know the mayor of Battle Lake pretty well over the past five months. She was not your average west-central Minnesota woman—fake Southern accent, tight clothes, cosmetics applied with a putty knife, crispy blonde hair, and a controlling streak that would make Martha Stewart blush. The fake accent was what set her apart from the crowd. Rumor had it she was spooning Gary Wohnt, the local police chief, but I wasn’t much for gossip. All I knew for sure was that Kennie was two clicks away from crazy, and somehow she made it work.

“I think there’s some vodka in the cupboard over the fridge.” Think, my ass. I had bought two liters of Absolut last week, after I had lurched over my third dead body in as many months. I had managed to save half the second bottle, but only by supplementing it with wine. When relocating to Battle Lake last March by request of my good friend Sunny, who needed a house- and dog-sitter while she flitted off to Alaska with her mono-browed lover, my goal had been to take a life timeout—get sober, rest, reprioritize—and then launch myself back into the mix with both fists swinging. A small town is the perfect place to do that, right? Ha! Welcome to Battle Lake, Minnesota, where the women are churchgoers, the men like to hunt, and the body count is above average.

On the surface, Battle Lake was picturesque. You could reach it on a straight shot up Interstate 94 and a little jog north. The journey took about three hours from Minneapolis, and you’d swear it was worth every minute of that drive when you crested that last hill and spotted the red-topped water tower, tree-lined Lake Street, and wide-open, smiling faces. The town was packed with antique and knick-knack shops, an art gallery, a full-service drugstore, and its very own accountant, health clinic, municipal liquor store, dentist, chiropractor, and law firm. In the summer, there was even a gingerbread shed right off the main drag where you could buy vegetables on the honor system, leaving your folded dollars in the cash box. People didn’t lock their doors in Battle Lake, and if you went in the ditch, you’d have someone pulling over to help you before you even got out of the car.

The downside was that everyone in town would know you had slipped in the ditch just as quick. Plus, you could only get two channels on your TV, and short of counting dead bodies and drinking, there wasn’t much to do. I had my gardening, of course, and two jobs, one as the librarian for the Battle Lake Public Library, open 10–5 Monday through Saturday, and the other as the on-call reporter and regular columnist for the Battle Lake Recall, which came out every Wednesday and sold for fifty cents a copy. I was horribly underqualified to run a library, but a series of calamitous events in May had pushed me into a promotion. Mrs. Berns, the local bawdy old lady, helped me by shelving books and checking out patrons, and we limped along just fine at the library.

I wrote two columns for the Recall. One was “Battle Lake Bites,” and it featured a regional recipe each week. The other column was cleverly titled “Mira’s Musings,” and contained updates on local events. You wouldn’t think that would be an edge-of-your-seat affair in a town of 797 people, but you would be wrong. I had just composed a doozy of an article about the kidnapped Chief Wenonga and Big Ole statues, the former a twenty-three-foot fiberglass sex bomb that normally resided directly off the western shore of Battle Lake, and the latter a pasty, twenty-eight-foot fiberglass Norwegian “warrior” with a skirt, who was supposed to live in Alexandria, Minnesota, but who had disappeared along with the Chief. Call it a run-of-the-mill July for this whacked-out town.

However, despite the lethal mix of quirky locals and mischievous mayhem that made up Battle Lake, I had been eking out my place in the town. People waved to me on the streets, I knew where to find a good cup of coffee and some killer Tator Tot hotdish, and both my jobs centered around reading and writing, the two consistent loves of my life. And I had been deliciously excited to make a little extra room for Johnny Leeson, local hottie. I didn’t normally go for the Scandinavian type, but his dirty blonde hair was curly thick, his eyes were so blue I swear I could see waves in them, and he had these tanned, muscular hands perfect for pulling you close for a brook-no-objections, Harlequin-romance-cover, marauding-pirate kiss. Or so I had imagined, during many a long hot shower.

Better than his looks, though, Johnny was smart. He was a local who had gone on to earn a B.S. in horticulture and been accepted into the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s doctoral program in same. He had been visiting his parents this past spring, set to start grad school in the fall, when his dad had been diagnosed with terminal stomach cancer. Johnny stayed around to help his mom take care of his dad, and after his father died, to help his mom adjust and get back on her feet. He was making the best of his current life—working at the nursery, teaching Community Ed gardening classes, and playing around with a local band. Oh, and making pants wet everywhere he went.

Johnny would be embarrassed if he knew how many chicks in Battle Lake dreamed about him. I had sworn I wasn’t going to be one of them. Nature had facilitated this questionable endeavor by turning me into a stuttering idiot in Johnny’s presence. I had been safe until we ended up working together last week to find the Chief Wenonga statue. Johnny’s deep blues had stared hard into my core, his vibrating cell phone had thrummed between us, and his beautiful cupid’s bow of a mouth had asked if he could come over to my place. Tonight. And instead of consummating those plans, I was looking at the ass of a forty-something woman digging into my panic-attack cupboard for the last bottle of vodka.

“Why are you wearing bike shorts?”

“I was exercising when I got the news.” Kennie huffed as she pushed herself off my countertop, unscrewed the silver Absolut cap, and took a swig. She critically surveyed my green and white, pre-fabricated kitchen as she swallowed. “I never liked these modular homes. One strong breeze and you’re all of a sudden living in Douglas County.” She fingered a hole in the wall, left over from a party a few summers back. “The walls aren’t even a quarter inch thick. Would you look at this?”

I was grateful for the distraction, as I had been trying to look anywhere but at the giant moose knuckle spray-painted between her thighs, begging for attention. Some genius had apparently decided that sewing padding into bike shorts would make for a more comfortable ride. Unfortunately, it also made Kennie look like she had a fast-rising loaf of bread baking in the front of her shiny-tight pants.

“Maybe you want to sit down?” I asked, pulling out a chair. She shrugged and plopped herself into the straight-backed wicker kitchen seat. I sat across from her, relieved to have a table between my eyes and her privates. Too bad the table was glass-topped. I slid the fruit bowl over to block my view of her down below and snatched away the vodka, no pun intended.

“Let’s start from the beginning. You were exercising when you got what news?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“So why’d you come over?”

Her face screwed up. I thought she was going to burp, but then she started sobbing in loud, horsy snorts and seized the vodka bottle back. “It’s Gary.”

“Gary Wohnt? Is he okay?”

“Someone else,” she said, between sobs. Her makeup shifted another level.

“Not Gary?”

“No! Gary’s found someone else.”

Ah. Police Chief Gary and Kennie had been dating. “Oh. I’m sorry.” Mostly, I was sorry that she was in my house. We weren’t exactly girlfriends due to our differing viewpoints on how to treat people, dress, speak, and think, and I took it as a depressing statement on her personal life that she had only me to turn to right now. She must be one of those people who equated proximity with friendship.

She certainly was a pitiful figure, snuffling and wiping her fist across her face to divert the cry-snot. Her hand trailed a little mascara mustache on her upper lip. “I have done everything for that man. And he has left me for another.”

“Who?”

“Gary. Gary has left me for another. Try to pay attention, Mira. I’m spilling my heart.”

“No. Who’d Gary leave you for?”

Kennie sighed dramatically. “God.”

“I’m sure it must be tough.” I waited for her to continue.

“No, God, you idiot. Gary left me for God. He’s found the church, and he doesn’t think it proper for us to continue our ‘unholy’ relationship. That’s what he called it.”

For once, I agreed with Gary. I reached for the vodka and chugged, dismayed to find that it tasted salty. “What sparked his conversion?”

“Some new minister in town, a friend of a friend, Gary says. Rat bastard took my man.”

I wasn’t sure if the rat bastard in question was God or the minister, but I was all about trashing on the unfair sex right now. Gary had chosen God over Kennie, and Johnny had chosen who-knows-what over me. “You can’t rely on one single man in this town.”

“Hallelujah. Do you know that I just got done nursing that man after nose surgery?”

“Gary got a nose job?”

“No, he got his sinuses drilled. They clean out all the junk and then stick some cotton tubes up the nostrils to absorb the blood. You couldn’t pull ‘em out for days.”

I threw up a little in my mouth. “You must have really liked him to do that.”

“I did.” She sniffled. “And who else am I supposed to date? I can’t go out with strangers.”

Ah, the Little House on the Prairie model of dating. Being from the tiny Minnesota town of Paynesville, I recognized this attitude. You could only go out with men you met at the Mercantile, or a friend of a friend you ran into on an occasional trip to Sleepy Eye for some poplin. Developing a relationship with someone no one in your circle knew, or, heaven forbid, seeking out new experiences, was out of the question. I did appreciate the benefits of sticking with the familiar, but the downside of this dating model was that even a Mr. Edwards or a Willie Olsen would start to look good after all the Almanzos were taken. Hence the plethora of smart local women living with seasonally employed mouth-breathers.

“Maybe you could just be single for a while?”

She snorted and took a long pull off the vodka. “You got any more liquor?”

I did. It was for emergencies only, but if not now, then when? I got up and strode to the rear of the double-wide, fishing the bottle of tequila out from under the bathroom sink. I cracked it and shivered at the spicy kerosene smell. The bottle felt hot and heavy in my hand, and I recognized I was riding the buzz cusp, that point where you’re sober enough to know you should go to bed right now and drunk enough not to care. I glided back to the kitchen and mixed us both a tequila on ice with a squirt of lime juice.

“How long had you and Gary been dating?” I asked, handing Kennie her drink.

“I’ve known him since high school. He worshipped the ground I walked on.”

The liquor I was drinking like Kool-Aid made me generous. “Well, of course he does.”

“Did. He did. Now he’s all godly.”

“Bastard.”

She clinked my glass. “I suppose you don’t have to worry about none of this, being a lesbian and all.”

I coughed, sending burning tequila through my nose. “Huh?”

“Oh, is it supposed to be a secret? Then you really should start wearing makeup, honey. And curling that fieldworker hair of yours. Else, you might as well wear a sign that says you don’t want a man.”

I ran my fingers through my hair and self-consciously wound it into a bun at the nape of my neck. Holding my hands up that high made me feel dizzy. “I don’t want a man, but not for the reason you think. They’re unreliable. The whole lot of them.”

Kennie nodded sympathetically. “Like your dad? The murderer?”

Christ. No wonder Kennie didn’t have any girlfriends. She didn’t know how to hang. For the record, my dad was guilty of manslaughter and not murder, but it hurt everyone involved just the same. When he was alive, he nearly drank himself to death, and when that proved too slow, he’d drink and drive. One night, he crashed into another car, killing himself and the mother and baby boy in the other vehicle. I was sixteen when it happened and people started calling me Manslaughter Mark’s girl. Not to my face, of course, but I had heard the whispers and sometimes thought I still did. Suddenly, the tequila tasted sour in my mouth, and my stomach felt oily.

“I’m tired, Kennie. I think I wanna go to bed.”

“That’s fine, honey chile. I’ll just crash on your couch.” She made the “sh” on “crash” long and snaky.

“What?”

“Oh, don’t mind me. I’m as quiet as a dead man.”

Oof. That hit too close to home. “Can’t you sleep in your car?”

“No can do, sugar. I biked here. I’m going to look so hot by the end of this month that Gary Wohnt will forget all about God.”

“Biking home right now would be great exercise.”

But Kennie wasn’t listening. She pingponged over to the sectional couch with the rust-colored, cabin-in-the-woods pattern, where she fell face down into the nappy cloth. She twitched and wriggled a little before she began snoring so vociferously that it came out her ears. I sighed, stumbled over, and lifted her head to the side so she wouldn’t suffocate. My hands were sticky blue with her eye shadow when I pulled them away. I capped the tequila, returned it to its hiding place in the bathroom, and shoved the empty vodka bottle to the bottom of the garbage so it couldn’t judge me in the morning.

Soft tears slid down my face as I cleaned. Without Kennie to distract me, I was left with my dark and slippery thoughts, which came surfing back on the tequila and vodka. Johnny hadn’t shown up, and he wasn’t ever going to. I had been an idiot to get my hopes up, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to make that mistake again. It was long past time that I realized I wasn’t going to find love here, or anywhere. I was an independent woman, á la Kate Jackson, circa Charlie’s Angels. I didn’t need anybody, and for sure nobody needed me in this lousy, dead-end, murder-drenched town. In that instant, my mind was made up. I was going back to the Twin Cities as soon as I could find a real librarian to take over my job.

___

I woke up Friday morning with a hangover so familiar I considered it a friend. Feeling a little sad, a little relieved, and a lot empty, I chewed four bitter aspirin and took a shower. I was quiet as a clam so as not to wake Kennie, who had flipped herself over in the night. Her melted makeup had attracted some tufts of couch lint as well as a healthy dose of calico cat hair, thanks to Tiger Pop. He lay benevolently on her chest, a Cheshire grin on his pink kitty lips. Every now and again his tail would twitch over her nose, causing her to honk and sniffle in her sleep. I grabbed him off her, as much to save him from getting any more lipstick on his fur as to do her any favors.

I pinched an apple and a bottle of juice and opened the front door to herd out Luna and Tiger Pop. Outside, the sun’s rays tattooed my hungover head, piercing my eyes like hot needles. The July morning was humid and pushing eighty degrees, even though it was not yet nine a.m. This summer had been tropical, and my vegetable garden looked like something from Land of the Lost, with monstrous green tomatoes dripping off the staked stems and orange squash blossoms as big as dinner plates opening up to the sun. I rinsed out Luna and Tiger Pop’s water bowls and filled them to the top before hiding them in the shade under the house. Part of the apron had come off the double-wide, creating a cool retreat for my animals as well as a wayward skunk or two. I slid a couple bowls of food under there and promised them that I’d be home before dark.

“Stay out of Kennie’s way,” I warned them. T. P. rolled his eyes at me, but Luna was eager to please, as usual. Dogs are such sluts.

Kennie’s bike, an ancient no-speed with big black handlebars and a banana seat, lay flush on my blooming roses. I had planted the peach and white climbers against a wooden trellis on the sunny south side of the house this spring, and they had been doing great right up until the bike had flattened them. When I disentangled her two-wheeler, the salty-sweet smell of crushed roses drifted up. I rolled the bike to the front porch so Kennie would be sure to see it first thing and be on her way.

The last part of my morning ritual was feeding the birds. I am not a fan of the winged population, and they don’t exactly wait in line to beg my autograph, either. I get pooped on at least three times a year, but I keep the birdbath and feeders full in hopes of an uneasy truce. They still like to play chicken with me, lunging at my head at opportune moments and then veering away after I make some embarrassing spastic gesture to protect myself, but at least they don’t charge en masse, and I figured that was because of the food I put out every morning.

I curled into my two-door Toyota Corolla, slapped on the seat belt, and donned sunglasses against the bright, blazing ball rising behind me. I’m sure it looked gorgeous reflecting its lavender and tangerine rays off Whiskey Lake outside my front door, but I wasn’t in the mood for beauty. I was all business, intent on heading directly to the library to write a help-wanted ad. By the time I opened at ten a.m., that ad would be in all the regional newspapers, every college in the five-state area with a Library Sciences program, and on all the major Internet job search sites.

I noticed my hands gripping the steering wheel tight enough to leave marks, and I forced myself to relax. Any life change was sure to create stress, I reasoned, and that’s why I was so uptight about last night’s decision to move. The thing about change is at the outset a good change felt as scary as a bad change, and sometimes you just needed to jump and hope you landed right.

That’s what I was telling myself as I drove into Battle Lake, already bustling as tourists drove their boats and RVs into town. I nodded at Harold Penderly, the owner of the Hardware Hank, out front washing his own windows, and pulled into the library parking lot, cruising into the spot marked “Reserved for Librarian.” I stared at the yellow brick building that I had come to know so well, and shook my head to clear out any sentimentality.

The phone greeted me shrilly as I unlocked the front door. I jogged over to it, my keys jingling in my hand. “Hello?”

“Mira! I was hoping I’d get you.”

My heart leapt to kiss the phone and then dropped like a bag of kittens tossed in a river. “Johnny?”

“Yeah! How are you? I just called your house, but you weren’t home. Did you know Kennie Rogers is there?”

Anger, disappointment, and a third, unrecognizable emotion fought for my attention. “Yes. What can I do for you?”

He sighed. “You sound mad, Mira. I don’t blame you. I should have called last night, and I’m sorry I didn’t. You know when I left you to go check in with my mom? When I got to her place, there was a call from the University of Wisconsin. At Madison.” There was a pause as he waited for me to respond. “Mira? Are you there?”

“Yup.”

“It’s amazing, but it was one of my old professors! She said she has a six-week project she needs a research assistant for, and it might lead to a full ride for fall semester. She said she needed me out here immediately.”

“Here? You mean you’re in Madison right now?” My old friend, the hangover, suddenly felt like a hangman’s noose.

“Yeah!”

“I thought you were taking a year off to help your mom.” It was a spiteful thing to say, and I immediately regretted it after I heard the guilt in Johnny’s voice.

“I was, but she said she’s fine and would never forgive herself if I didn’t go.”

“Well, I guess there’s nothing holding you back. Good luck.”

He was quiet on the other end of the line, so quiet that I almost apologized for my chirpy, dismissive words. “I’ll be visiting a lot. There are some people in Battle Lake who I care a lot about.”

“Yeah, there’s some nice people here.” I squished my eyes shut. I hated being a crybaby.

“I mean you, Mira. I think we have something.”

“I guess we’ll never know, huh? You’re in Madison, and I’m moving back to the Cities.”

“What?”

“Yeah, there’s not much for me in Battle Lake, you know?” I liked myself a little less with every word that cracked out of my mouth, but I couldn’t stop. “You’re a good friend, and we should keep it that way. Hey, maybe we can be pen pals!”

A pause. “That’s what you want?”

“It is. I’ll be sure to check in on your mom for you when you’re gone, okay? Until I move, that is.”

“Okay. Fine. Bye.”

“Bye, Jeff!”

“What?”

“Johnny, I meant! Sorry. I was just putting away a book by some Jeff guy. It’s still early, for me. Bye, Johnny.” The name of my murdered ex-lover dangled heavy in the air between us, and I couldn’t for the life of me decide if I had thrown it out there on purpose.

He hung up without another word. I went into the back room to splash water on my face. On the way, I gathered all my feelings around me like a billowing parachute, carefully folding and tucking until they fit into a neat knapsack, which I put off to the side. It was the last time in my life I’d be able to compartmentalize so easily.

August lumbered in, the weather grew impossibly hotter, and farmers muttered about drought as their crops turned crispy and their irrigation systems taxed the water supply. The tourists loved the hot, clear weather, and the beaches and local shops were packed like seeds in a pomegranate. The out-of-towners seemed not to notice the lawns turning brown or the watering bans, and happily packed themselves into Stub’s every night to enjoy live music and juicy, butter-knife steaks. In this way, the dance between the needs of an agricultural community and the requirements of a tourist-based economy played out against each other as they had since rich East Coasters discovered the beauty, solitude, and plentiful fish in Battle Lake back in the early 1900s.

As the resumés for the job as new Battle Lake head librarian began trickling in, I studied each one, reminding myself it was a ticket out of here, away from memories of Johnny, and Jeff, and crazy people too numerous to count. I was too far into feeling sorry for myself to even be embarrassed by how wildly under-qualified for this job the incoming applicants proved me to be. When a little downtime in the library presented itself, I created a banned books display to feed my low-burning but constant anger and frustration. The display featured some of my favorite books of all time. Of Mice and Men, The Catcher in the Rye, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, A Wrinkle in Time, The Color Purple, pretty much anything by Judy Blume and Stephen King, the Harry Potter series, and The Handmaid’s Tale. I took grim pleasure in the fact that books flew off the display and I needed to continually dig for more censored literature to add.

I also sent Sunny a postcard to let her know I was moving. It would have been braver to call, but her hours were unpredictable, I reasoned, so mail would be the best way to let her know that in a couple weeks, a very nice couple from town would be moving from their apartment to Sunny’s vast and beautiful farm to care for her house and dog until her return.

Before I knew it, it was Friday, August 13, and it was time to interview the crop of hopefuls to find my worthy replacement. Mrs. Berns had agreed to come in early with me to get the library spick and span before the interviews. Not surprisingly, I found myself alone in the yellow brick building at eight a.m. on this scorched but cloudy day. The weather, a colicky mix of heat and shade, set my teeth on edge as I unlocked the library door. The air had a hint of smoke, despite the burning ban, which created a mental image of the prairies surrounding us going up like a Kleenex. There’d be no white knight to save me, I thought petulantly, missing Johnny so much in that moment that my skin felt swollen. I hadn’t heard from him since our unpleasant July phone conversation. When a rap came on the door behind me and pulled me out of my self-pity, I was grateful. Mrs. Berns, I figured. Now I’ll have someone around to be mad at.

I turned and was surprised to see a young and pretty woman instead of a geriatric and libidinous one. For a moment I thought it was Lucy, the peppy high school girl who had been helping me out on the busy weekends, but the woman shifted her face and I saw she was a stranger. I made the universal, point-at-your-watch-and-shake-your-head gesture for “we’re closed, come back later,” but the woman shrugged her shoulders and smiled like she didn’t understand.

I pulled the door open. “The library doesn’t open up until ten o’clock. You’ll have to come back in a coupla hours.”

“Oh no! I’ve got a super-long shift, and I don’t have a thing to read. I was supposed to be at work five minutes ago, but I can’t bear the thought of another day without any books! I love those romances. I’m Alicia, by the way.” She held out her manicured hand.

I knew Alicia, or at least her type. It was her brunette-Barbie beauty, youthful arrogance, and overfamiliar, “you’ll give me whatever I want, won’t you?” smile that tipped me off. She was that girl, the one who, in middle school, got all the other desperate follower girls to wear their Guess jeans and turtle necks on Monday, and then showed up in a completely different outfit herself and made fun of them for being uncool. On Tuesday, she’d coach those same lonely girls to be mean to a randomly chosen chick in their group. When Wednesday rolled around, she’d make them all drink some nasty concoction to show their loyalty to her, and then ignore them when the popular kids strolled past. And so it went, until no girl in Alicia’s orbit knew who she could trust and either got smart and started hanging out with the nerds or the druggies, or morphed into a miniature, poorly dressed Alicia. Be sure and ask me how I know so much about what the lonely, follower girls went through in public school.

Yes, I knew Alicia’s type—the ones who were pretty, popular, confident, and entitled in elementary, middle, and high school— and thought they could coast on that for the rest of their life. Too bad no one bothered to tell them you could only cash those checks until you were eighteen. After that, the playing field evened out. A little. “Sorry. You’ll have to come back later. Maybe over your lunch break?”

“Is that a mouse behind you?”

I turned toward where she was pointing. “I don’t see anything.”

“I swear I just saw something run under that desk over there. Maybe it was a rat. I’m gonna go peek, and we can herd it outside together.” Alicia sailed past me, flashing a conspiratorial grin on the way. We were going to hunt rodents together. No scaredy cats, us.

She crouched on all fours. “Mind turning on the lights?”

I flipped the switch and went to fire up the front computer. There was no mouse, but she was going to entertain me in exchange for letting her in early. Crafty, that one, I thought as I appraised her. She was an inch or two taller than my 5'6", maybe ten pounds lighter but two cup sizes larger, and her long brown hair was curled and sprayed into place. She wore a fair amount of makeup, but it was expertly applied to look natural.

She was cute and she wanted to play Power Ball, but I wasn’t in the mood. That was more telling than any other sad sack thing I had done in the last four weeks since Johnny had ditched town and me. If I wasn’t willing to outwit an obvious control freak in my own territory, I was seriously depressed. “If there was a mouse, it’s long gone. You might as well grab a book or two, since you’re in here already.”

“You sure you don’t want me to get the mouse?”

“We both know there’s no mouse. You need a library card, too?”

“If you don’t mind.”

I slid the form toward her. “Fill this out.”

Alicia attempted to catch my eye and make nice, but I kept my gaze fixed on my computer screen. When she grabbed a pencil out of the cup in front of me and filled out the form, though, her necklace caught my eye. It was a delicate golden cross hugged tight around her neck, like a choker, and splayed on the cross was a tiny, crucified Jesus in all his scrawny glory.

She caught me staring. “It was a gift from my mom.”

“Hmm. Where’d you say you work?”

“I didn’t.” She slid the card back toward me. Alicia Meale, and an address in Clitherall, the two-bars-and-a-post-office town just up the road from Battle Lake. Ms. Meale looked like she had neither done an honest day’s work in her life nor eaten venison, pheasant, or snapping turtle, which would make her stand out like a purple pig in that town.

“You’re new around here?”

“Not exactly. We’ve been here a few months. Anyhow, I better be going, or my boss is going to get crazy angry. It took longer to get a card than I thought it would. Maybe I’ll come back over my lunch hour?”

“We’re open until five o’clock.”

“Great! This is an awesome library.” She trailed her fingers over the front counter as she left, and stopped at the banned book display on her way out. “Unbelievable!” She laughed. “You’ve got a display of banned books! Too cool for school. Aren’t you worried you’re going to get in trouble?”

I warmed to her a hair, a microscopic, split-end of a hair. Maybe she was a misplanted chick, just like me. “In Battle Lake, you don’t get in trouble. It gets in you. Besides, they’re just books.”

“You’re a little bit of a rebel, Mira James.”

The door dinged as she let herself out, and I looked around for anywhere my name would appear. I didn’t wear a nametag, announce my name or station anywhere on the front desk, and I didn’t post newsletters around town. For someone I had never met before, she knew a little too much for my comfort. Or maybe my depression was making me paranoid, as well.

It didn’t matter much. I’d be gone in two weeks, if all went well today, and Alicia Meale could turn Battle Lake into a hemp-harvesting, pyramid-worshipping, electrolysis-mandating commune, for all I cared. I shelved the books that had been dropped after closing last night, dusted and vacuumed, and had all the résumés arranged by time of interview when Mrs. Berns showed up with Lucy in tow.

“You’re both late.”

“I’m so sorry, Mira.” Lucy looked ready to cry. I had met her last May, when she offered to work at the library for minimum wage. She had been a junior in high school at the time and said she loved books more than anything. There wasn’t enough money to hire her on regularly, but her earnestness had convinced me to let her help out on an as-needed basis. “Mrs. Berns called and asked me to pick her up, and when I went to get her, well, it took a little longer than I thought.”

Lucy looked uncomfortably from Mrs. Berns to me, and then went quickly to the back room to get dusting and watering supplies. “What’d you do to her?”

Today, I was happy to note Mrs. Berns was looking exactly like you’d think a little old lady should—tight-curled apricot hair, penciled-in eyebrows, big saggy nose shading a pair of salmon-pink lips, a red Sedona T-shirt, a pair of white shorts, and white bootie socks with flat white tennies. If not for the pair of sharpshooters tucked into her gun belt, you’d want to hug her and call her grandma. She flashed her watery eyes at me. “Why you always playin’ me, homey?”

“Have you been watching MTV again?”

“Tru dat. And the sweet little poonta over there was helping me out.”

“How?”

She took out a Polaroid. “We pimped my ride. I told her I’d pop a couple caps up her ass if she didn’t help.”

I held the photo of Mrs. Berns’ seldom-used walker and admired the flames on the tennis balls stuck to the bottom of it, as well as the skull-and-crossbones stickers up and down the metal sides. The black plastic streamers coming out the handles were particularly arresting. “Very nice.”

She snatched the picture back. “Thought so.”

“You ready to work?”

“I’m here.”

I blew air out my mouth and settled in. The plan was for her to run the library as I conducted the interviews, but to check in on all the candidates surreptitiously. That was funny, because Mrs. Berns was subtle like a yeast infection. I figured, though, since she was going to work with whomever I hired, she had a right to weigh in on them.

“How many applicants you got?”

“Four interviews, Mrs. Berns. What’s up with those pistols, anyhow?”

“These?” She tugged them out of their holsters and fired a couple rounds toward the ceiling. The smell of sulfur filled the air as the caps popped off. Delicate smoke curled out of each plastic barrel. Lucy, to her credit, didn’t jump as she shelved books. “I had such a hoot with them and Bill after the Fourth of July parade that I figured I’d just hang on to them. They make a good conversation piece. Now tell me again why you’re leaving town, chickenshit.”

“If you promise to stop calling me ‘chickenshit’.” It was how she had been addressing me since I informed her of my plans to move. She holstered her guns and pretended not to hear me, one of the luxuries of the golden years, but I answered her question anyway. “I’m leaving town because there isn’t anything here for me. I’m not qualified to be a librarian, I don’t get paid enough to be a columnist, and this town is full of crazy people and murderers.”

“Pah, pah, pah, and pah. This town was just fine until Mr. Johnny Leeson ditched you like a deer carcass. Don’t you know you’re not ever supposed to do anything just because of a man? Don’t stay for a man, don’t leave for a man. You make your decisions for yourself. Chickenshit.”

I sighed. The door opened, saving me from a chickenshit reply. In walked a woman whose attitude was certainly in its fifties if she was not. Her gray-flecked hair was noosed back in a severe bun, her scraggly eyebrows shot out from her horn-rimmed, bechained glasses, and her nose spread out in an effort to slow its descent into the colorless razor-cut where her lips should have been. Her blouse was gray, as was the sweater tied over her shoulders, the shapeless pencil skirt covering her bony lower body, and her support hose. The only flashes of color were her black, orthopedic shoes. She apparently had not gotten the memo that librarians were cool.

“You hire her, girl, and I’ll make her life a living hell.”

I believed Mrs. Berns, and I believed it when she said it before, during, and after the next two interviews, one with a statuesque former ballerina who could no longer dance due to a toe injury, and the other with a shiny-faced boy fresh out of grad school. The spitballs she lobbed at them along with the fake cat turd she pretended to slip on while I interviewed each (“Ouch, my hip!”) cemented their lack of interest in the job. When the fourth woman walked in at noon, I was frazzled, frustrated, and not optimistic. This candidate looked like a brown-haired Shelley Long, circa Cheers, with good posture and a bad perm, and in her early forties. She struck me as one of those women who was so pleasant and average as to be almost invisible. Her name was Sarah Ruth O’Hanlon, and according to her résumé, she had ten years experience as an assistant librarian in the St. Cloud Regional Library system.

When she shook my hand, her grip was firm and dry. “Welcome to our library,” I said. My eyes furtively scanned the room for Mrs. Berns, who had gone AWOL when she saw Sarah Ruth enter. Lucy was behind the front desk checking out books, a happy smile on her face.

“Thank you. It’s lovely, as is this town. I appreciate your time.”

When Mrs. Berns leapt up from behind the giant green dinosaur in the kids’ reading section and popped a couple caps with her fake gun, followed by a hoot, a holler, and a thunderous fart, Sarah Ruth didn’t flinch. “You’re hired,” I said.

“What?”

“Your résumé looks impeccable, and the job starts immediately. Are you interested?”

“Well, I, ah, I guess.” She smiled at me, a little frown line between her eyes. “Are you sure you don’t want to call my references?”

“Do you think you’d be okay living in Battle Lake?”

“I imagine so. I grew up in a small town, and I have family here.” She nodded at me, convincing herself as she spoke. “I think I’d love it.”

“That’s all the reference I need.” I smiled on the outside. “Can you start training on Monday? I’ll stay around for two weeks to show you the ropes, and then you’d take over.”

“And what will you do after the two weeks are up?”

I blinked, one eye closing sooner than the other. “I’m moving back to the Cities. I just came here to housesit for a friend for a couple months, and I think my time is up. I’m getting someone else in town to take over her house September first, so I can pick my life up where it left off.” Alone, living in a dreary apartment on a depressing street, drinking too much, and cutting classes. My nose started to run, so I sniffed and held out my hand. “See you Monday?”

Sarah Ruth gripped my proffered hand warmly, and rested her free one over it. “I’m excited to start, but sad that it means you’ll be leaving. I think you and I would get along great, Ms. James.” I became aware of a tiny silver crucifix on her neck, a miniature version of the one Alicia Meale had been wearing this morning. Crosses were not unusual, but crucifixes were rarely worn as jewelry in these parts.

“That’s an interesting necklace. Do you mind if I ask you where you got it?”

Her hands dropped and moved self-consciously to her throat. “It’s a little macabre, don’t you think? My niece bought it for me in Mexico, and I wear it out of loyalty. It wouldn’t be my first choice in jewelry, given my druthers.”

Mrs. Berns, who had holstered her pistols and army-crawled to the open spot in the middle of the library where I was conducting interviews, saved me from a reply. “Shit or get off the pot.”

“Excuse me?”

“Either start working, start reading, or get out of the library. This isn’t a halfway house.”

I helped Mrs. Berns off the floor. “This might be a good time to introduce you two. Mrs. Berns, this is Sarah Ruth. She’s going to run the library when I leave.”

“You ain’t leaving.”

I sighed. This was an argument I couldn’t win. “Sarah Ruth, Mrs. Berns. She’s the librarian’s assistant.”

Sarah Ruth chuckled. “It was nice to meet you, Mrs. Berns. I look forward to starting work with you on Monday.”

“If I come. My social calendar fills pretty quick, you know.” With that, Mrs. Berns went back to shelving books. No more farts, fake cat feces, or gunshots. I took that to mean she liked her new boss. I introduced Lucy to the new hire, then walked Sarah Ruth out into the blazing heat of the early afternoon, wondering at the squishiness of the molten pavement.

“It’s a good summer to own a lake home,” I offered.

“Yes, I love it.”

I smiled politely. My comment had been general, but her response had been specific. When Sarah Ruth got into her car, I returned to the air-conditioned coolness of the library and breathed deeply. I tracked down Mrs. Berns in the reference section, where she was looking up “thespian.”

“Hunh. I always thought it was one of those women who like women. Guess Ida wins that bet.”

“Sarah Ruth seems nice.”

“Humph. If you like those gangly, pear-shaped women with pizzly home perms. Mostly, that type’s just good for childbearing, but if you think she can be a librarian, then what do I know?”

“You might end up liking her.”

“What’s in it for me?”

Lucy appeared from behind the Pla-Sca aisle, a sweet smile on her face. “I thought she was very nice.”

I nodded. Lucy looked for the good in everyone and always found it. It wasn’t a particularly useful quality in my eyes, but it hung nicely on her. I turned to the back room. “I’m going to get our new shipment catalogued. You know where to find me if anyone needs me.”

I’m pretty sure I heard a muttered, “Chickenshit,” as I strode to the back, but it was too quiet to be certain. It could have just been my conscience.

When Monday scorched around, I hadn’t yet screwed up the courage to give Ron Sims, owner, editor, publisher, and ad man for the Battle Lake Recall, my two weeks’ notice. I figured I’d send it in an e-mail today with my two deadlined columns, the one on the August Moon Festival and the other featuring a gnarly recipe for “Battle Lake Bites.” To that end, I had risen before the sun and gone into town to fire up the library computer.

I was actually looking forward to the upcoming August Moon Festival, my first and last in Battle Lake. Based on my research, the celebration had a primitive, pagan feel, and I loved any excuse to get back to the dirt. It appealed to my inner gardener. I gathered my notes around me and began a draft of the article in the quiet, pre-dawn library.

August Moon FestivalCelebrates The Harvest

Saturday, August 21 marks the 55th annual August Moon Festival in Battle Lake. The festival can be traced back to the mid-1950s, a time of challenges and privation for agricultural west-central Minnesota. In the fourth year of a drought that had ravaged the region, local farmers became desperate. Those who were WWII vets had heard about a Chinese tradition called the August Moon Festival, when families celebrated the harvest with a feast to honor nature’s bounty and encourage it to return the next year. The farmers decided they had nothing to lose, and the Minnesota version of the August Moon Festival was born.

Chinese tradition holds that the mid-autumn festival should be celebrated the 15th day of the eighth lunar month. That worked for local farmers who decided to hold their festival in mid-August to coincide with the wheat and oat harvest. The celebration originally included a community potluck in the streets of Battle Lake, along with dancing and an annual drag race.

The August Moon Festival has since evolved to a potluck masquerade ball held at Hershod’s Corn Maze on Highway 210, between Battle Lake and Clitherall. The Festival begins at 5:00 p.m. this Saturday and ends at midnight. It is open to the public, and there is no entrance fee if you bring a dish to share. Costumes are optional but encouraged. The band Not with My Horse will be playing from 9:00 p.m. until midnight.

Incidentally, the drought ended shortly after the initial August Moon Festival, and Battle Lake has had green harvests ever since, until this year. It has been nearly four weeks since the last recorded rainfall in Otter Tail County. Hopefully, the celebration this year will once again work its magic.

I winced when I typed the name of the band. The lead singer of Not with My Horse was my ex-boyfriend, who I now referred to as Bad Brad. Brad and I had dated in the Cities, right up until I caught him making skin-flute music with my neighbor’s dog sitter. I had moved to Battle Lake shortly after that. When Bad Brad’s band showed up in town in July to play a gig at the Battle Lake street dance, he fell in love with the place and took up shop. He was now oddjobbing during the day and bartending at Stub’s and playing with his band at night. Other than one close, bikini-wax run-in with Bad Brad and Kennie last month, I had successfully avoided him since he had moved to town. I was hoping I could maintain my perfect record at the August Moon Festival this Saturday.

I proofed the Festival article and put it aside until noon. That was my deadline and would give me enough time to look over the article with fresh eyes before I zipped it off to Ron. Next on my list was the recipe search. My personal crusade was to find unique recipes that were representative of the oddness, flavor, and overall feel of Battle Lake. I eyeballed the wall clock, too old-fashioned to check the one on my computer, and saw I had an hour before Sarah Ruth showed up for her first day.

I fired up Google and typed “Food I’d Never Eat” into the search bar. I came up with worm, lizard, and moose-testicle recipes, but nothing that screamed Battle Lake. I changed my search to “Weird Minnesota Food” and mostly pulled up dishes that were thinly disguised vehicles for Cream of Mushroom soup. I revised my search to “Moving Food,” with the thought that I would soon be relocating. I think the computer thought I meant food that moved one’s bowels because I clicked on a whole slew of strange edibles.

I skipped over Spam Shake and Kitty Litter Cake (complete with Tootsie Rolls as garnish—yum!) as too obvious. I wanted to go out with a bang, with something really wild and memorable. That’s when I tripped across it: Turdeasant—a turkey stuffed with a duck, stuffed with a pheasant, stuffed with dressing. How grody toad meaty was that? Three dead birds in one. People’d be eating it long after I’d moved.

The recipe was deceptively simple. You brine all three birds overnight in one cup of salt, one cup brown sugar, and one gallon water. The next day you heat the roaster to 500° F and shove some Stove Top Stuffing into the turkey. Not too much, though, because you’ve got two more birds moving in. Next, you nestle the duck in the turkey cavity on its fluffy stuffing bed, and then you grab onto something for leverage and shove that pheasant as deep into the duck as you can. Don’t forget to surgically insert the leftover stuffing into any hint of an orifice.

Then comes the final step, the turdeasant coup de grâce. You truss the turkey cavity (read: sew the birdhole) by inserting a metal skewer about one-half inch from the edge of the skin and up through the other side. Next, run butcher’s twine between the skin and the skewer and tighten it until you’ve drawn both sides together. As the last step in trussing, tie together the turkey legs so your hybrid creature resembles a standard turkey. No ducks and pheasants hiding in here, says Dr. Frankenstein!

Finally, you sprinkle paprika on the turkey and roast the turdeasant long enough to brown. After about fifteen minutes, turn the oven down to 325° F and bake for approximately three hours. Remove the turdeasant from the roaster once the innermost bird, the pheasant, is at 170° F. Let it sit for twenty minutes and think about what it’s done, and then serve to your ever-lovin’, ravenous, knife-wielding family.

I was onto something here. Maybe we could start a pigoosken or deerlamalina roasting tradition. Why eat just one animal when you could scarf down a threefer? Sigh. I was going to miss Battle Lake, a little bit. I changed the roasting time on the recipe from three hours to five—I didn’t want to get sued for giving someone salmonella—saved the recipe on my computer, and cruised to unlock the front door in anticipation of Sarah Ruth’s arrival, as she didn’t yet have a key.

It was nine thirty, and the library wasn’t due to open for another half an hour. To my dismay, there was an oddly dressed family of three making their way down the street toward me. The male was clad in a lightweight black coat and slacks and a preacher’s collar, one of the females was in a wheelchair and a turtleneck on this sultry August day, and the other, younger female pushing the wheelchair was wearing a modest dress. The way she carried herself struck a familiar chord, but I couldn’t see her face well under the rolls of dark hair. Maybe they were just heading to the Apothecary for some odds and ends, I thought, retreating to the cool interior of the library.

I grabbed the books out of the after-hours drop bin, relishing their solid feel and the clean, comforting smell of ink on paper. There were five nonfiction (Jesus: Then and Now, Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story, Just Say Yes, The World Is Flat [Updated and Expanded], and Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World) and three mysteries. I was on my way to the front computer to enter them into the system as returned when the front door let out its chirpy, muted ding. I turned, expecting to see Sarah Ruth, and instead was greeted by the sight of the somber family I had just witnessed on the street.

“I’m sorry, but we don’t open until ten o’clock. That’s just another twenty minutes or so.”

The man smiled widely and offered me his hand. “I’m Pastor Meale. We’re making our way through town and introducing ourselves to the businesspeople.”

I darted a glance at the dark-haired female, the one who had seemed familiar on the street. Meale. Alicia Meale, the assertive young lady who had stopped by the library on Friday and left without a book. Her transformation from then to now was shocking, from pretty and outgoing nineteen-year-old to matronly Christian girl, makeup free in her shapeless flowered dress. The only carryover was the golden crucifix at her neck. She caught my look and gave me a devilish wink, like we shared a secret, and my original take on her was reaffirmed. She was the human equivalent of a Twin Bing candy bar, sweet on the outside and weird and nasty on the inside. Problem was, a lot of people liked Twin Bings, and I bet a lot of people fell for Alicia, too.

I shook his hand. “I’m Mira James, and I’m the librarian. Well, at least for another two weeks I am.”

He nodded distractedly, as if I had interrupted his chain of thought, and pushed up his old-fashioned, gigantic, rectangular-framed glasses that only shop teachers and lumber salesmen wear. “This is my wife, Naomi, and our daughter, Alicia.”

Naomi held up a bony, beringed hand from her seat in the wheelchair. I shook it, gently, and ignored Alicia’s outstretched hand. She dropped it when I turned back to her father.

“You’re new in town?”

The pastor looked sharply at Alicia before continuing, and I wondered what he made of the body language between us. “No. We’ve been here for several months, building up a congregation at the New Millennium Bible Camp, south of Clitherall. Are you familiar with it?”

“I’ve driven by it on the way to Inspiration Peak.”

“Ah, yes. Beautiful area over there. We’re very pleased to be part of the community. Tell me, Ms. James, are you a believer?”

The Monkees song thrummed irreverently through my head, and it was all I could do not to sing it back to Mr. Meale—“I’m a believer!” But I desisted, just, fighting down sarcasm, my natural antidote to arrogance in others. “I don’t go to church.”

I could see him taking stock of me, and my price was dropping. Before he could respond, his wife interjected. “Our faith is the most important thing we have. ‘Faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see,’ Hebrews 11.1.”

Mr. Meale looked approvingly at his wife. “Very apt.”

“You are the head, Robert. Through God’s grace, I am only the neck.”

I shivered. Could this be the new minister and his family that Kennie had talked about, the ones who had slipped inside Gary Wohnt’s skull? “You seem like a very close family.” My joke was lost on them.

“And we’d like to invite you to be part of our family, Mira. Is it okay if I call you Mira?” I nodded at Robert Meale, and he continued. “Although participation in the Bible Camp is open to only those who can commit to a week of faith, fun, and fellowship, we’ve opened the church at the Camp to the public for one service Wednesday nights and two services on Sunday. We hope you’ll join us.”

“Thank you for the invitation, but I’m not really a faith and fellowship kind of gal.”

“But we’re having an open house this Thursday!” Alicia said, handing over a flier. “You should at least come to see what we have to offer. I’m sure you wouldn’t object to having us leave these on the counter, right?”

The flier was well done, with a lot of white space and not too much distracting information. It listed the name, date, and location of the event, along with the facts that it was open to the public; there would be food, drink, and games; and guests were invited to view the Creation Science Fair put on by local youth.

I was unfamiliar with the concept and my question leaked out before I could stem it. “Creation Science Fair? Isn’t that an unlikely pairing?” I swear I couldn’t help myself. Religious pressure was the worst kind because proponents weren’t just bargaining with your social standing; they were holding your very soul at stake.

Pastor Robert’s eyes narrowed. “You’ll distribute the flier?”

“I’m afraid I can’t. As a state-funded agency, I’m not allowed to promote any religious activity.” I was 98 percent sure I was lying, but it sounded better than, “I’m afraid you are brain-eating zombies, and if I give you an inch, you will remove my free will and coax me into driving a minivan, staying in the kitchen to cook while the men watch sports in the den, and nervously shushing people when they want to talk about sex, drinking, or public education.”

“Ah. I see. I see clearly.” He snatched the fliers out of my hand and walked past me to the banned book display. “The state doesn’t support religious freedom, but it sponsors blasphemous literature?”

I felt momentarily shamed by the display, like it had been childish to exhibit banned books and maybe I was about to land in big trouble. Then, my shame turned to anger, as it is wont to do. “Those are books. This is a library. In this country, people are allowed to read and to write what they want.”

Pastor Robert turned, his eyes unreadable. “Maybe it’s not the government that does or doesn’t want these things. Maybe it’s you. I won’t leave the fliers here, though I know I can. It is my hope you find your way to us in a manner that is comfortable to you. Come Naomi, Alicia. We have many more friends to make.”

Cripes, I hated it when someone took the higher road than me. It rankled to lose at the rock, paper, scissors games that, strung together, made up our lives. I thought about thanking them for coming, decided that would be insincere, and instead made up my mind to avoid them for the next two weeks. Then, I would be outta here.

The jangle of the phone startled me, coinciding as it did with the ding of the door as the pastor and his family exited. “Battle Lake Public Library.”

“It’s Ron Sims at the Recall.”

As if there were any other. “Hi, Ron.”

“We’ve got a new family in town.” My stomach dropped. It wasn’t possible. “The Meales, over in Clitherall. They’re having an open house at New Millennium Bible Camp on Thursday, and you’re covering it for the paper.”

“I’m leaving, Ron. I’m moving back to the Cities in two weeks.” I hadn’t meant to tell him like that. Ron and I had developed a comfortable relationship over the last few months. I ignored the fact that he lacked social skills and was addicted to making out with his wife in public, and he ignored the fact that I couldn’t stay out of trouble and regularly disregarded deadlines. I liked him, and I felt like a louse for leaving him with a position to fill.

“You better hurry with that article, then.”

“I’ll miss you, too.” Click. I was left with the phone in my hand and a quiet smile on my lips. Ron was nothing if not consistent. I’d cover the open house, but I wouldn’t like it. I went back to the books I had been about to enter in the computer when the Meales had shown up. When the door donged again, I turned, clenched, to see who else this morning was going to deliver up.

“I’m so sorry I’m late! The first day on the job and I’m not on time. I feel like an ass.” Sarah Ruth’s long, kinky hair was coming loose from her ponytail, and she tried to stuff it back up as she spoke. Problem was, her hands were covered in black, which she was transferring to her hair.

“What happened to you?”

“Flat tire. Thank God it happened over by Koep’s gas station in Clitherall. I never did learn how to change one of those by myself.”

“Someone changed it for you?”

“Yes, an attendant at the station.”

“Then what is all that black stuff on your hands?”

Sarah Ruth looked at them and chuckled. “I held the nuts for him. They must have been covered in oil. I can be such an airhead. I bet I got it all over my hair, didn’t I?”

I smiled. “Yeah. You can use the bathroom in back to wash up. You didn’t miss much. I haven’t even started opening.”

“Oh, good. I’ll be right back.”

I e-mailed the two articles to Ron, and when Sarah Ruth returned, I showed her the library opening processes, went over the book sections, and talked about our more colorful clientele. When it was time for Monday Madness, the moniker I had affectionately given to the kids’ reading hour, she helped to keep the wilder ones interested as I narrated the Olivia the Pig series. Reading to kids was the part of this job I would miss the most. They were so sweet, not a cynical one in the bunch, and when they would start laughing at the stories, the hilarity would pass through the whole group like a happy flu, until everyone was doubled over. Some Mondays it sounded like a calliope of giggles in the kids’ corner, and all it took was a book with a talking monkey. At first it threw me that some of them liked to sit on my lap as I read, playing with my hair or turning the pages for me, and then I began to look forward to their wiggling warmth.

Sarah Ruth seemed to enjoy the toddlers and preschoolers as much as me, which gave me a comfortable liquid feeling rare this past month. She was pleasant, smart, and a quick learner, and I was amazed to see that it was one o’clock. “Jeez. I’ve been working you like a dog. Why don’t you take your lunch break?”

She glanced at the clock. “I’ve got a better idea. How about I get us some grilled cheese and French fries from the Shoreline, and we can have a picnic in back? I hate to leave you for an hour when it’s this busy.”

“Deal,” I said, smiling. “Bring me lots of ketchup.”

As closing time on Sarah Ruth’s first day rolled near, I dare say I was in a good mood. I was going to leave the library in good hands, and that made me satisfied, if not happy. When Tina Mathison strolled in, a basket of Nut Goodies in hand, I amped it up another notch. Tina, along with her husband, owned the business four doors down from the library—Tina and Tom’s Taxidermy and Trinkets, which everyone called 4Ts. Tom stuffed animal cadavers and gave them marble eyes in the back room while Tina sold reasonably-priced but high-quality silver and pewter jewelry in the front. We didn’t know one another socially, but Tina was a frequent library patron, and I made a point of stopping in her store regularly to visit and buy up some of her great Bali earrings and bracelets.

I waved her over. “Come by to give our new librarian a welcome basket?”

“Actually, Mira, it’s for you.” For the first time, I noticed Tina’s normally bright face was sagging. In her late fifties, she had escaped most of the calling cards of age by staying out of the sun and eating right, is what she told anyone who’d ask. She had pleasant wrinkles around her eyes and mouth, but was otherwise youthful. Today, though, her mouth was pulled down in a rare frown, and she had grayish bags puffing up her eyes.

“Are you okay?”

She forced a smile, but it didn’t make it up to her blue eyes. “Not really. I need your help, and I’ve come with a shameless bribe.”

“And you know my weak spot. There’s enough Nut Goodies here to get me through a month!” I swallowed the bonus saliva produced at the sight of so many vividly red and green wrappers. Inside each was a little bit of heaven created by the geniuses at Pearson’s, a Minnesota candy company. They made salted nut rolls, too, which were good, but they weren’t nut good, if you know what I mean.

I had a true addiction to the chocolate- and peanut-covered maple candies. I had lately been using the treat like methadone to wean me off my returning liquor habit, but based on the contents of this basket, I was past due for a little hedonism.

“There’s more than candy in there,” Tina said.

I swiveled the basket and jumped when I saw two beady black eyes staring back at me. “What is it?”

“A ferret. It died of natural causes, and the owner never came back for it after Tom stuffed it. I figured you could put it in your living room. I also got you a pile of those beaded elastic bracelets you like so much.”

Talk about a mixed bag. I flipped it back around so I could only see the Nut Goodies and not the dead creature fraternizing with them. “Thanks, but I’m sure I don’t need all this. I’d be happy to help out, if I can.”

Tina glanced at Sarah Ruth, who took the cue and headed to the back of the library. “This is uncomfortable, but I don’t know who else to turn to. I don’t want to go to the police because it’ll look like I can’t run my business. Besides, I don’t want any of my girls to go to jail. I just want to talk to them, give them a second chance.”

“Back up a little. Go to jail for what?”

“I think one of my clerks is embezzling from the store. Money is missing from the till at least twice a week, but it’s not specific to anyone’s shift. Tom or I are there all the time, but I go on short buying trips most weeks and that leaves him working in the back room. He can’t keep an eye on the store every second.”

“You’ve talked to Tom about this?”

“Yes. He’s upset, but I made him promise to give me a chance to figure out what was going on before we tried the police. You know Annika, the new girl I hired? The embezzling started around the same time she did.”

“Is she the one from Henning, the tall blonde?”

“Yes. She just graduated from high school last year and is working part time for me before she starts at the tech school in Alexandria.”

“Have you thought about just confronting her?”

Tina wrung her hands. “But what if I’m wrong? That would be a terrible way to treat her if she’s innocent. But if she’s guilty, I want to lend a hand, not arrest her. Can you help me?”

“I’m not sure how.”

“Just stop by and check things out. You’re so good at figuring out these little local mysteries! See if you can, you know, pick up any clues. You can talk to each of the girls and let me know what your intuition tells you. I’d be forever grateful.”

I didn’t know how good I was at solving mysteries. I had a natural curiosity, certainly, and more than my share of nosiness, but it seemed like mostly I was always in the wrong place at the wrong time. In fact, I could go my whole life without finding another dead body, killer, or fiberglass statue. I weighed my options, but Tina’s long face made up my mind. “Well, for a basket of Nut Goodies, how can I resist?”

“Thank you! You’ve got a good heart.”

“I think I just have a sweet tooth. I can’t promise anything, though, and I won’t spread rumors. Unless I see clear evidence of stealing, I won’t have anything to report.”

“Fine. Can you start today? Here’s the girls’ schedules. Two of them are working until eight o’clock tonight, Kaitlyn and Annika, and they’re both working tomorrow. Wednesday it’s Lydia and Annika.”

“Annika is working all three days?”

“Just this week. She usually only works three days the entire week, and it’s usually weekend days. We’re doubling our shifts to cover the extra crowds in town for the August Moon Festival.”

I wrote down the schedule, and after she left, I named the ferret Nut Goodie and stashed it in the window near the kids’ section. I figured I could work it into a story or two and give the children some cheap thrills. I saved the bracelets in my prize box. I liked to reward the kids for meeting their reading goals and had collected various curios the last few months. The actual Nut Goodies, I saved for myself. Once an addict, always an addict.

A voice broke into my musing. “You really like this job, don’t you?”

“Hunh?” I was so into organizing the new treasures that I hadn’t heard Sarah Ruth return.

“You were smiling just now while you were working.”

“Was not.”

She chuckled softly. “I love the job, too. We get to be the ultimate teachers, only with no papers to grade. We connect someone with a book, and they get to travel to exotic places, learn how to build a greenhouse, or reach out to their children by reading to them. It’s exhilarating.”

“That’s a happy Hannah way of looking at it, I suppose.”

“You suppose. Well, you’re good at your job, Mira, and people appreciate it. You know everyone who has walked through that door by name.”

“It’s a small town,” I grumbled. I wasn’t a fan of having sunshine blown up my skirt.

“It’s a small town, and you’re their librarian. They’re going to miss you, and miss the courage it takes to do something like a banned books display.”

“You’ll do just fine without me. Why don’t we go over the closing routine? I’ve made a list of the procedures, though you can certainly change it if you find something that works better.”

We worked quietly, me to recover from the ill-fitting praise and her because she was taking notes as I showed her where to dump the garbage, where the vacuum cleaner was stored, the book-check rotation so all the shelves were reviewed at least once a month to make sure everything was Dewey decimalized, and all the other small tasks that were undertaken between four and six p.m.

When we locked up and parted ways, I steered myself toward 4Ts. My plan was to talk to Annika and Kaitlyn and see if I could pick up anything suspicious. I wasn’t hopeful, but I owed Tina that much. Plus, I’d be right across from the Turtle Stew and could pick up something for supper.

The night was shimmery with heat, and everything had that too-bright, post-camera-flash look of drought. The bits of grass on Lake Street were as brown and sharp as hay, and the heavily watered municipal planters with their pansies, vivid and cheerful Gerbera daisies, alyssum, and devil’s ivy looked frivolous. Granny’s Pantry, the local candy store and ice cream parlor, was so full that people were lined up, waiting on the street. Those who had their double-dip waffle cones in hand were in a hopeless race to lick the rapidly melting ice cream before it ran past the tiny marshmallow sealing the cone bottom.

This weather is bad for farmers and good for business, I thought, turning into 4Ts. The store was packed, jammed with sunburned tourists just off the lake and looking for distraction and relief from the heat. The small, crowded front room that made up the Tina portion of the shop smelled of coconut sunscreen and pine-scented mosquito repellent. I wove my way over to the ring display at the back of the store near the till, hundreds of handcrafted silver circles displayed in black velvet. They were plain, or had semi-precious stones like amethyst and garnet worked cleverly into them, or held intricate designs. It was a wonder everyone didn’t steal from Tina, what with all this glittery splendor within easy reach.

Behind the counter, two young women, presumably Annika and Kaitlyn, smiled as they answered questions and rang up sales. They were both comfortable with their jobs, reaching smoothly around one another to grab gift wrapping, a calculator, a ring sizer. Kaitlyn was a typical Battle Lake high school graduate—fresh, blue-eyed, and blonde. She was curvy and wore a royal blue sundress that showed off her strong shoulders.

Annika was also blonde, but her height set her apart from the crowd. She was at least six feet tall, maybe a little more. She dressed boldly for a tall woman, wearing a hot pink tank top over an acid green and yellow skirt. I remembered those colors from my high school years in the ’80s. They didn’t look good then, but it might have been because they couldn’t compete with the big-hair-with-claw-bangs, Dynasty eye makeup, and pinned jeans we all wore with them. On Annika, the colors looked electric and attractive. They almost distracted from the very expensive-looking jewelry dripping from her wrists, fingers, neck, and ears.

I grabbed from the display box a tiny yin yang ring that I could give away to one of the kids next Monday, in honor of the August Moon festival, and made my way to the till. Kaitlyn was free, but my target, Annika, was busy, so I pretended to dig through the basket of elastic toe rings at the front counter. When a woman as pink and skinny as a newborn pig asked Kaitlyn for help clasping a necklace, I pounced on my prey.

“Hi! Can I buy this ring?”

“You sure can. Those are very popular this week.”

“I guess, with the festival coming up on Saturday. Say, aren’t you from Henning?”

She looked at me curiously, then went back to removing the price string from my purchase. “Born and raised. Are you from there?”

“No, I live in Battle Lake. I’ve seen you around, though. I work at the library.”

“Oh, sure. You’re Mira, right?”

“Right. Oh jeez, that’s a gorgeous bracelet,” I said, pointing to her tennis bracelet of tiny green jewels. “Did you get that here?”

She smiled. “No. We’ve got nice stuff here, but it’s more for the tourist crowd, you know?”

“Sure.” On her right wrist she wore four golden bangles, along with the green-jeweled tennis bracelet. She had matching earrings and a necklace, each with a larger, teardrop version of the green gem. Her fingers sparkled as well. For all I knew, she could be wearing $19.95 worth of cubic Zirconia or $1995 worth of emeralds. Either way, Tina must certainly have noticed the extravagance, so I didn’t have anything new to report. Besides, the fact that Annika owned nice-looking jewelry didn’t prove a thing. “You guys get much shoplifting here?”

“We’ve got mirrors,” she said, nodding over my shoulder. “We try to keep a good eye on things, but sometimes people get a five-finger discount. It’s mostly old ladies in their fifties, if you can believe that.” She took my money, made change, and handed the package to me.

“Thank you,” I said. I glanced at Kaitlyn on my way out. She was the picture of youthful innocence, and I didn’t want to ask her questions in front of Annika. They would be sure to talk about it after I left, and if one of them was the embezzler, she would be on her guard. I would come back on a day when only Kaitlyn was working, or Kaitlyn and the other girl, to see if they’d offer anything about Annika or any other suspicions they had. Of course, since the stealing wasn’t shift-specific, two of them could be in cahoots, but that seemed unlikely. Stealing from a till seemed like an activity best done alone.

I strolled over to the Turtle Stew and relished the familiar sight of the red Naugahyde booths, bustling wait staff, and tables crammed with hungry, happy people. It smelled like fresh-baked bread and slow-cooked meats, with an undercurrent of sauerkraut, or some other exotic German fare. The Stew was a full-service restaurant with a set-up bar, which meant that if you wanted hard liquor, you had to bring it yourself. The locals were usually four to a table, couples who would play 500 or Solo after supper, a big bottle of Canadian Club in a handcrafted carry case between them. Out-of-towners sipped wine or 3.2 beer, which you could buy on site.

When it was my turn to order, I picked one of my favorites, my tummy feeling warm at the thought of the comfort food. “Tuna casserole, green beans, and a salad with French dressing on the side. Can I get sunflower seeds on that? And it’s to go.”

I read the community board as I waited, my food anticipation high dulled by the thought that this might be the last time I’d buy takeout from the Stew. Oh, well. I can always visit. In less than twelve hours, I’d gladly have given a kidney to return to the normalcy of that moment.

I woke early on Tuesday morning, feeling so organized that I managed to take Luna for a forty-five-minute walkjog before I headed off to work. It was hot out like an orange stovetop ring, but I was in too good a mood to complain. I had found a fantastic librarian to take my place and do a much better job than I ever could, Ron Sims knew I was leaving and hadn’t been mad, and I had my whole future ahead of me. Starting over is hard, I acknowledged, but I was brave for trying. I wasn’t a quitter, I was a leader. I could enroll in some grad classes at the U of M, maybe land a TA position if there were any left, and force some direction back in my life.

That’s what I told myself as I steered the Toyota along snaky Whiskey Road, one bare foot with blue-painted toenails resting on the driver’s side window, the other on the gas pedal. I was heading to work three hours early to clean the library from top to bottom and get it ready for its new boss. I reached over to crank up the Tom Petty song leaking out my stereo and riding the acrid air, wondering about the high whine in the song, almost like a siren. I had never noticed it before. That’s when I spied the cherries in my rearview mirror. “Shit!” I pulled my left foot down. It wasn’t illegal to drive with one foot up, was it?

I slowed the car, my heart racing, and pulled off on a flat spot. I squinched my eyes shut and tried to hide in my shoulders, hope hope hoping it wasn’t Gary Wohnt. We didn’t get along so well when he was a regular guy. Now that he had Jesus in his life, I was sure he was going to be that much crabbier.

When the cop car raced past, scaring up dust on the shoulder as it swerved around me, my head shot up like a turtle. I hadn’t been the target, and there was no one else on the road. I peeled out after the royal blue vehicle without thinking. A police car in full rush at seven a.m. on a Tuesday meant something terrible had happened, probably an accident or a fire. What if it was Mrs. Berns hurt, or Johnny Leeson’s poor mom, or even, I suppose, Kennie Rogers? I was better off being at the scene to help rather than growing gray hairs at work, worrying about my friends.

The Battle Lake police car had a good lead on me, but I could hear its sirens to the south as I hit Larry’s Grocery, so I turned right toward 210. I spotted the cop car zooming toward Clitherall, tractors, pickups, and minivans pulling off the road to let it through. I knew everyone who saw it race by had a freezy grip on their heart like mine, wondering if it was their neighbor, their husband or wife, their child that the police were going to try to save.

I was cruising seventy-five miles an hour, but as I crested the hill where I could turn left to enter Clitherall or right to go to Koep’s Korner, it became chillingly obvious there wasn’t anyone available to give me a ticket. A half a mile ahead of me, all three local police cars were turning north. I rode the brakes, recognizing the back road they were veering onto. Clitherall Car Wash, the locals called it, because it took a sharp turn that no one was ever prepared for, particularly a person leaving Bonnie & Clyde’s. To the east of the razor curve was a large swamp, complete with cattails and sludge, that had christened many a vehicle full of drunk teenagers, tipsy housewives, and beer-chugging farmers.

As I turned down the Clitherall Car Wash road, a heavy, salty-bitter taste formed in the back of my throat. Somebody was seriously hurt, and I was about to find out who. I flashed back to the night the police had called my mom and me in to identify my dad’s car. His body had been burned too severely for a visual identification, but it’s hard to significantly alter the appearance of a 1980 Cavalier. It was his car, bent like a Coke can under a giant’s fist, the stench of cooked flesh still strong on it. Somehow, the Paynesville driver’s ed instructor got his hands on the wrecked car and set it up as a permanent, “don’t drink and drive” display, one that I was forced to walk past to get to school my junior and senior years. Even though the interior had been power-washed, I still imagined that smell, was embarrassed by it, was certain all my classmates could also smell my dad roasting next to an open bottle of vodka.

I never wanted to witness something like that again, but I couldn’t stop myself. I numbly noted the brown and orange-trimmed fishing shack to the left, contrasting with the bright green swamp grass of the shoulder against wheat-brown cattails to the right. Then I registered a group of people standing in the ditch at a low point in the road, at the spot just before it shrieked left toward Bonnie & Clyde’s.

I parked a hundred feet away from the gathering. I slid out of my car, the sound of the door clicking shut behind me muffled in the oppressive air. I floated toward the police cars, hearing but not understanding the shrill buzz of a woman, weeping. No one noticed me as I rounded the police car closest to the group and walked down through the sand-sprayed grass.

I smelled it before I saw it, that metallic, gory smell of violent death, playing through the fresh country air. A cluster of police surrounded the weeping woman to my left, and straight ahead two more officers crouched around a female shape on the ground. It was her hand I noticed first, unwrinkled, freckle-free, taut, spread out on the ground like she was jumping off a barn beam into a pile of hay and hadn’t yet landed. She was no farther away from me than a clerk at a drive-through, but I felt like years and miles obscured her. Around me, people buzzed and moved, and I felt invisible.

I followed the arm up, noting the dark green cloth covering it. Her hair was long, dark and messy, splayed over her head like a fright wig where it wasn’t matted with blood. My eyes skimmed over the dip in her back, about the size of a baby’s fist, couldn’t process that detail, and traveled over to where her other arm should be. I couldn’t see it. It must have been twisted under her body. She was wearing a skirt, short, pleated, and trimmed in white. Her legs were bare, firm and strong, and on her feet were white socks and sneakers. One shoe was untied, and the leg it was on was twisted gruesomely around so her toes were almost pointing up at the bright, unforgiving sky. I glanced back at the depression in her torso, relatively clean and round at the entrance point, though it looked like it had been made with an elephant gun. The dead girl was a cheerleader, and she had been shot in the back.

“What are you doing here?”

I couldn’t pull my eyes away. They were stuck on that murky hole and the missing flesh that should have protected her heart. I fancied I could see the bright grass underneath her through the wound, but then realized it was mucky bones, shattered, sharpened, and reflecting sunlight.

“I said, what are you doing here?”

A hand grabbed me, roughly, and I caught a glimpse of Gary Wohnt before I wobbled to the other side of the road and threw up. Between retches, I scoured the ditch for more dead bodies, or body parts, but the grossest thing on this side of the street was coming out of my mouth. When my stomach settled, so did my ears. I heard the woman who found the cheerleader describe how she was staying at a local resort and had been jogging. The tourist was near hysterical and had nothing to offer.

I spit and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. I felt empty, but far from cleansed. My nose and throat burned, and I needed a shower. I knew that dead girl.

I lurched into my house like brain-eating zombies really had attacked me. Tiger Pop and Luna followed. When I tumbled onto my couch, Luna snuffled my hand and Tiger Pop laid across my lap. My head was empty except for the picture of the ragged wound in Lucy’s back—Lucy, who loved books more than anything and always looked for the best in people. I wondered if her parents knew yet, if they were just puttering around their house, waiting for her to get home from summer cheerleading practice, if Gary Wohnt was about to knock on their door and ruin their lives. Lucy’s parents were dairy farmers, the old-fashioned kind who believed in hard work and good manners. They were also the ones who had given Lucy the lovely gold charm bracelet with red dangling hearts on it that I had seen on her cold gray wrist as she lay sprawled in the ditch.

Dark thoughts chased each other in my head like wild animals, their claws ripping and slashing until I had a bleeding muscle of a headache. I don’t know if I passed out or fell asleep, but when I next looked at the clock, I had lost an hour. It was nine a.m., and I was soaked in sweat. I concentrated on the blinking numbers on my VCR, orienting myself to the room, the house, the town, the planet. None of it felt right. All I knew for sure was that I was in Battle Lake, and sweet young Lucy—the girl who was going to St. Cloud State after her senior year to major in elementary education, who liked to party with her friends but always showed up for work early and with a smile on her face—had been shot in the back. I stumbled off the couch and stepped out into the oppressively hot day.

A cow lowed in the distance, and I could hear families already splashing in the lake near the Shangri-La Resort. My sweet garden stretched out in front of me like a black, freshly dug grave. I strolled over to it, walking lightly, and bent down to rub my cheek against the soft and spicy tomato leaves. For the whole month of June, I had eaten fresh lettuce, radishes, and peas. As those crops waned, cherry, pear, and beefsteak tomatoes, baby potatoes, kale and chard, and onions replaced them. All the plants were robust and tall, and it was easy to separate the week’s growth of weeds from them. I plucked and pulled for several minutes, moving back to put weeds on the same pile. I tasted salt and dirt as I worked, the combination of steamy air and dusty soil making for a fine layer of black earth clinging to my moist skin.

My weed pile was not impressive, but then again I was meticulous about my garden. Here was my order and structure. It was the one place in this whole world where I could feel safe and necessary. I could nurture without being seen and without fear of criticism, permanent loss, or shame. I gathered up the weeds and tucked them around the base of my three cabbages, each of them nestled in a bottom- and top-less giant tomato can, shoved deep into the earth to keep grubs from getting the roots. The weeds would keep the moisture in and deter new weeds from taking root.

My brief bout of weeding finished, I stood up and heard both knees creak. The sprinkler lay next to the garden where it had been earning its keep and then some for the last four dry weeks. I centered the oscillating waterer and cranked the faucet on the side of the house, watching the cool water spurt into the air before it got sucked greedily into the bone-dry earth. The sprinkles were soothing, soft rain feeding my hungry plants. Without any concrete plan, I stripped off my clothes and lay down next to the sprinkler, between the potatoes and peppers. The oaks and lilacs were thick around my yard, creating a natural barrier to any wandering eyes, but it wouldn’t have mattered because at the moment, I didn’t feel connected to this world’s rules.

As the water washed over my naked body, making tiny clean spots on my dirty skin and reflective pools in my tender parts, I became aware of my roots leaking into the ground, looking for purchase. Water began to puddle, seeking out the dry, powdery dirt still protected under my back. I thought I heard the plants sigh. I got up, turned off the water, and went inside to get ready for work all over again.

I opened the library a half an hour late, seeing Lucy’s smile in the unshelved books. I even thought I heard her giggle once, but when I went to the stacks where I had heard the sound, no one was there. The library was a lonely place to be on this day, and I was grateful when the door opened, even if it was Kennie who walked through it. We hadn’t seen each other since she had melted a little on my couch in July.

“I see you’ve pissed off God. It’s a growing club.”

“What?” The question was as much directed at her outfit as at her statement. She was dressed in head to toe leather, from the animal skin do-rag holding back her brittle platinum hair to the Bedazzled vest to the chaps-over-tight-leather pants that would make Cher feel exposed. I looked over her shoulder at the shimmering heat rising off the paved parking lot and back at her tightly sealed, oily body. All I could think was “mushroom farm.”

She thrust a stapled sheaf of papers at me. “See for yourself.” Her outrageously orange lipstick curled in a smile, nearly colliding with her Anna Nicole fake eyelashes. The sheaf was a petition, and the cause being supported was succinctly and clearly stated at the top. “Ban the Battle Lake Public Library until decency returns. Sign below if you support removal of the Godless literature currently being promoted.” Alicia Meales’ signature was the first, followed by 112 others, including Gary Wohnt, Elvis Aron Presley, and Ima Pigglicker.

“Jesus. Where’d you get this?”

“I’m the mayor of this town, and I got my finger on the pulse. You’all’re lucky we’re friends so I can look out for you. I’m passing this on as a heads up, but it’s just one of three going around town. It’s burning up the streets in Clitherall. People can’t sign it fast enough.”

My hands shook in anger laced with fear, both emotions amplified by the tragedy of this morning. How dare the Meales try to tell people what books they could and couldn’t read, and turn librarians into censors! Could they force me to take down the banned book display? Without a generous endowment from Tom Everts, who owned the lumber store and several other businesses when he was alive, this library never could have been built, but we counted on state funding for day-to-day operations. Well-stocked libraries with decent hours were an endangered species in today’s political climate. Was I about to get the library in big trouble? “Can I keep this?”

“It’s all yours, darlin.’ ”

I folded the petition carefully, pushing my finger tightly along the creases. My voice cracked as I asked my next question. I knew it was Lucy in that ditch, but I couldn’t bear to say her name out loud. “What do you know about the dead girl in Clitherall?”

Kennie drew up tall, making a squeak-whoof sound that I prayed was only leather on leather. “How do you know about that?”

“A little birdie told me.” I don’t know why I said that. I hated that phrase.

“Since Gary has found God, it takes a little longer for me to get my information, but you’re gonna find out soon enough. She was that girl you had working here part-time. A real sweetie by all accounts, about to start her senior year. Lucy Lebowski. She had been missing since cheerleading camp the night before.”

“Do they know who killed her?”

“They’re interviewing her coach, the girls who saw her last, but they don’t have anything solid right now. Why? You gonna solve another murder?”

I was suddenly reluctant to tell Kennie I was moving and so wouldn’t be around long enough. “Not if I can help it.”

“Whatever. Be sure to stop by my house later. I have a new business proposition for you.”

I nodded absently. When she left, I went online, feeling jittery and insignificant. I needed to erase the picture of Lucy’s corpse from my mind, and I wanted to distract myself from the dangerous and irrational anger I was feeling toward the Meales’ petition. Sure, the petition sucked, but I knew if it wasn’t for the stress of Lucy’s murder, I would be able to put it in perspective.

I had to stay in the library, so to get my mind off things, I settled for researching a passive-aggressive, anti-church recipe for the column the week after next—Devil’s Food Cupcakes with Sinfully Rich Frosting. It was aimed specifically at those who believed I was promoting “Godless literature.” I typed up the recipe and sent it off to Ron, who would probably pop a zipper when he realized I was turning something in before deadline.

As I clicked the “Send” button, I thought about my teen years, something I had been doing a lot this month. My last up-close and personal encounter with organized religion had happened in high school. My mom had turned to the church, as many women in abusive relationships do, and been advised to stick it out for the betterment of her family, as many women in abusive relationships are. I was certain that if her minister hadn’t told her that her marriage was a test of her strength and faith, she would have left my dad. Probably he still would have died a stupid death, but it wouldn’t have been so heart-wrenching and immediate to me. I wouldn’t have been forced to walk past that stinking car every school day for two years, wouldn’t need to wonder what people were whispering about when I walked by. But my mom was urged to keep her family intact—told, in fact, that that was what God wanted. A worse plan I’ve never seen executed. That was enough religion for a lifetime for this girl.

I was relieved when the front door opened. I looked up, hoping to see Sarah Ruth early for her shift. I could tell her about Lucy and maybe share the burden, and come up with a battle plan to deal with the petition. Instead, in walked a man in a cape.

In this life, there are some things you can be sure of. One of them is that a man wearing a cape in Minnesota in August wants you to ask him some questions.

“Hello?”

He walked toward me, his hand outstretched. Except for the slick black cape, which was more of a capelet, I amended, he was average looking. Tall, maybe 6'4", with the awkward body of a man whose bones have grown faster than his muscles. His dark hair was mussed and hanging over his tiny, round John Lennon glasses. He grinned at me lopsidedly, making his unremarkable nose tug up over the left nostril. “I’m Weston Lippmann.”

We looked to be about the same age, so I dropped the formalities. “Hi, Weston. I’m Mira. New in town?”

“Pleased to meet you.” I thought I detected a soft, Southern accent, a natural one Kennie would kill for. “I’m new to town, but I’m not going to be in town. Not for very long. I’m a researcher around for a few weeks, and I was hoping you could point me in the right direction.”

My curiosity was piqued. “What are you researching?”

“Wood ticks. I’m the curator of the United States National Tick Collection, which is currently housed at Georgia Southern University.”

Like that, my curiosity deflated. “The collection travels?”

“Yes! Just like wood ticks.” He smiled apologetically.

“Mind if I ask what’s up with the cape?”

His cheeks reddened. “A personal eccentricity. I’m not fond of birds. They have a bothersome habit of, um, dropping on me. If I’m going to spend a lot of time outdoors, it makes more sense to wear this so I can wipe off any leavings.”

“No way! Birds don’t like me either!” It’s embarrassingly relieving when you find you share a neurosis with another person.

“Really?” He wasn’t sure if I was teasing him or not.

“Totally, yeah! I think it’s because I accidentally killed one when I was a little girl. I found a nest, transplanted it to my sock drawer, and forgot about it. Ever since then, birds lunge at and generally harass me. People think I’m weird.”

His eyes glowed as we bonded over our shared peculiarities, two lone geeks at the prom comparing pocket protectors. “Me too.”

There was an awkward silence, which I rushed in to fill. “So, you ran outta ticks in Georgia to study?”

He made a funny, throat-clearing noise. “Right now we’ve got more than 123,000 ticks in our museum, but I had some vacation coming up, so I figured I’d head north. I’m looking for information on a new breed of deer tick reported in West-central Minnesota.”

“That’s a vacation?”

“Well, I don’t normally do field work. Not anymore. But I love it, and I have some family not far from here, so I thought I’d combine work and pleasure.”

“Hmm. Well, good luck with that. What do you want to find out here? In the library, I mean.”

“Do you have any locally published history? Farmer’s journals, business ledgers, and the like?”

“Most of that you can find at the Otter Tail County Historical Society in Fergus Falls, about twenty miles up 210. I do have a copy of After the Battle, though. It’s a pretty interesting history of Battle Lake, put together by the Centennial Committee when the town turned 100.”

“Perfect!”

I directed him to the spiral-bound book in the reference section in the rear of the library and returned to find Sarah Ruth settled behind the front counter. “I didn’t even hear the front door open!”

She smiled sadly, looking a little ashen. “All librarians are quiet. Who’ve you got in back?”

“Just a guy in a cape. Pay him no mind.”

“Whatever you say.” Her acceptance of the eccentricities this town swept across her path amazed me. She twisted her crucifix necklace around her finger, and her mood deepened. “Did you hear about poor Lucy? Shot and left for dead in a ditch in Clitherall this morning.”

“She wasn’t shot in the ditch.”

“What?”

I didn’t realize I had said it out loud, or that I had even been conscious of that detail, until I heard my own voice. “She was lying in a ditch, sure enough, right in the Clitherall Carwash, but there was no blood splattered near her. I don’t know a lot about guns, but I do know you can’t shoot someone in the back without leaving a pretty gory mess. Whoever murdered her did it before they tossed her into that ditch.”

Sarah Ruth hurried over and threw an arm around me. “Oh, you poor thing! You actually saw that horrible scene?”

Weston reappeared. “Oh! I’m sorry.” He pushed his glasses up his nose with his pointer finger and looked from Sarah Ruth to me, obviously uncomfortable. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I, it’s just that, is there any chance I can check this out?” He held up a red, white, and blue copy of After the Battle.

I stepped away from Sarah Ruth and sucked a deep breath, all business. “No, but the newspaper sells them. I think they’re twenty dollars a copy.”

“The Battle Lake Recall, right? Where’s their office?”

“Right next to the post office. Go left out of here on Lake Street and you can’t miss it—right across the street from the Village Apothecary.”

“Would they also have information on any sort of community gatherings, sports events in the summer, that sort of thing?”

“I suppose.”

He flicked his cape at me and smiled shyly. “Thanks, Mira. I hope to see you again.”

“Watch out for the flying lizards.”

“You know it.”

When he left, I didn’t know what to say to Sarah Ruth. Her hug had thrown me off, so I returned to familiar territory—righteous anger. The banned book display petition reasserted itself at the forefront of my mind. “Do you know about the new ministry over at the New Millennium Bible Camp in Clitherall?”

She smiled distantly. “Yes. I went to services there last week. It’s right up the road from where I’m staying.”

“Really?” I wanted her to be as upset as I was. I was pretty sure she hadn’t recently been stood up and ditched across state lines by a very hot landscaper, gotten skunk drunk with a zaftig woman in bike shorts, or seen a young and sweet, tragically murdered cheerleader, but I knew there was one knob I could twist to get her tweaked. “Did you know those crazies are sending a petition around town to shut us down?”

“Shut down the library?”

“Well, at least shut down our banned book display. Who are they to say which books people can and can’t read?”

“Are you sure you have that right? The Meales seem like nice people, very supportive when I told them I was a librarian.”

I grimaced. “Next time you’re at one of their services, would you mind letting it drop that we’re not the enemy here at the library?”

“Of course.”

I wish that I could have left it at that, but patience was not a virtue I possessed. It was time to crank up the Pat Benatar, dig out the glitter eye shadow, and come out swinging. I had just the plan to restore a little justice to the world, and tomorrow afternoon would be the perfect time to put it into play.

The next day at the library, a Wednesday, couldn’t pass fast enough. When I wasn’t able to stand it any longer, I gave Sarah Ruth the keys and asked if she would mind closing up for me. I had one final obligation to fulfill before I could slip undercover. I had promised Tina I’d stop by her store and see what I could find out about Lydia, the employee I hadn’t met yet. It’d also give me a chance to see if I could find any more out about Annika, the suspicious worker. I would much rather be putting my excellent plan into play, but I had given Tina my word.

When I stepped out of the library, the hazy hot air was as heavy as a hand pushing down on me. Everyone around me was wilting and hugging the sparse shade under business awnings. Across the street, a gaggle of children held rapidly melting popsicles, grape and orange sticky-juice running down their arms. If we didn’t get relief from this weather soon, the lakes were going to be full of boiled fish.

I spotted Annika before I entered 4Ts. She was in the front display window rearranging some walleye, wood ducks, and beaded earrings. I waved as I entered.

“Nice day to get in from the heat!”

She smiled. “Can you hold this bird for me for a minute? I need to dust these bracelets up front and I can’t get to them with this plume in my way.”

She passed me a stuffed duck, its glass eyes sparkling. If it weren’t for Tina, I would have spit once on the ground for good luck and scrambled out the door. “Sure.” I put my hands out and cringed, certain that the birds would smell their dead comrade on me and seek revenge as soon as I left the store. I held the bread-loaf-sized corpse gingerly, surprised at the silky softness of the feathers and how little it weighed. It had a strange airiness, a cold dead husk of a thing, and it emitted a faint-rotten chemical odor. “Ever think it’s weird to have jewelry and stuffed animals together in one store?”

She shrugged. “It works. Speaking of, how do you like that yin-yang ring?”

“You’ve got a good memory.”

“Just for jewelry. I love it. See this aquamarine pendant?” She leaned toward me so I could get a view of the big blue sparkler around her neck. “Just got it. It’s rare to find an aquamarine this size.”

“They must pay you well.” I tried to make my smile easy, but I was a terrible actor, and the bird carcass in my arms made it all that much more difficult to feign cheerfulness. Her eyes turned hard, and she snatched the duck out of my hands and turned away.

“I’m good with money,” she said, her back to me.

I’ll bet she was. I had a hunch that Tina was right and Annika was supplementing her income on the sly. A hunch was just gossip all dressed up and ready to go out, though, and I had told Tina I wouldn’t report anything that wasn’t concrete. I decided to fish in a different pond. “You know that Lebowski girl? The one who was murdered?”

That brought immediate camaraderie, as death does, and Annika and I were friends again. She turned to me, her eyes wide. “Isn’t that awful? She worked at the library with you, didn’t she?”

I nodded, my lips pursed.

“That must suck. My friend Sally’s boyfriend Rick had just seen her at a party the night before.”

I wasn’t surprised. Like most teenagers in a small town, Lucy liked to drink with her friends. There wasn’t much else to do at night, and given the number of bars in each town, teens certainly saw the behavior modeled often enough. I had nothing to lose by leading Annika along, however. “Yeah? Did she go to a lot of parties?”

“For sure. She was a total Frito Lay.”

“Hunh?”

“Easy. She was easy. And she liked to whoop it up on the weekends.”

I withheld judgment. If being a partier was a capital crime, there’d be no cheerleaders left in rural Minnesota. Come to think of it, there wouldn’t be much of anyone left. Just the kids and people in full-body casts. Plus, I knew firsthand Lucy was a sweet person, regardless of what she did in her off time. “More than the usual?”

“Depends on who you ask.” She tensed a little, maybe sensing I wasn’t jumping on board the “blame the dead girl” train quickly enough. “Why do you want to know?”

“It’s depressing, you know? She was so young, and now someone killed her. Aren’t you sad?”

“Well, you know what they say—live hard, die young, and leave a hot corpse. Anyhow, Lydia’s the one you want to ask about Lucy. They were both on the cheerleading squad.”

Annika returned to her rearranging of the recently departed fauna and gold-plated jewelry, and I considered this piece of information. I was here to help Tina, but would it hurt if I could pick up some information about Lucy’s last night on earth? As her friend and employer, I owed her that much. I moved to the rear of the store, hoping to catch Lydia when she emerged from the “employees only” door. Two couples entered the front and browsed the racks. I inched closer to the rear door and knelt to sift through a basket of bangles. That’s where I picked up on some tense whispering coming from the rear room, and as I stopped making noise with the jewelry, I could make out words.

“…to steal from us!” It was a woman’s voice.

“If you thought someone was stealing, you should have gone to the police like I told you. But you know no one’s stealing. Maybe you should lay off the blonde juice a little and learn to count the till better.” This, a man’s voice, condescending and dismissive.

“I’m not stupid, Tom.” As I inched closer to the door and pretended to study the elastic toe rings on a shelf next to it, I recognized Tina’s voice. “I know how to count a till. Will you please listen to me?”

He mimicked her in a sing-song voice. “‘Will you please listen to me? Will you please listen to me?’ God! You sound like a spoiled brat. You’re just as bad as those idiot girls you hire.”

“I’m sorry, Tom. I didn’t mean to make you mad.”

“‘I didn’t mean to make you mad.’ Maybe you should try sparking that brain before you open your piehole, then.”

I clenched. I didn’t know Tom Mathison well. He spent most of his time in the back room or working in his shop at home, but when I bumped into him in town, he was always friendly, a broad grin on his ruddy face. He was short and meaty, with hands like baseball gloves, and a habit of slapping you on the back when you talked. I wondered if he also enjoyed slapping his wife as she talked.

Tina sighed, and it was heartbreaking for its timidity. “I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, you are. Are we done with this?”

“I won’t bring it up again.”

When Tina appeared in front of me seconds later, it was so abrupt that I didn’t have time to pretend I hadn’t been eavesdropping. “Hi.”

She flushed and studied her shoes. “Sorry if you had to hear that. Things are a little tense around here since the, well, lately.”

I wanted to make her comfortable. “Must be the weather. It has everyone on edge. Is Lydia here?”

“She called in sick. She was one of the cheerleaders at camp with poor Lucy Lebowski, you know, and she’s too distraught to come to work today. Anyhow, I guess I don’t need you to help any more. It maybe wasn’t a problem like I thought.”

I looked toward the front window and was momentarily blinded by the sun reflecting off Annika’s pendant. I wanted to help Tina win back some of her confidence. She was a nice woman in a bad marriage, a terribly common situation I had witnessed firsthand growing up. “I don’t mind.” I lowered my voice. “It’s just between you and me. So when do you think Lydia will be back?”

Tina considered my words, cast a furtive glance at the rear room, and whispered. “She said she’d be back tomorrow, working with Kaitlyn. You better go.”

“Okay.” I raised my voice to normal pitch. “That would be great if you could order me that Celtic puzzle ring. Fantastic! I’ll be by tomorrow to see if it’s in.” Before she could answer, I was out the door and into the dragon’s mouth. I stretched my arms over my head, shaking off the dirty feeling of hearing Tom abuse Tina. His wife had been giving him good common sense—an employee was stealing from right under their noses—and he had just ridiculed her. Verbal putdowns like that didn’t spring up overnight, and it saddened me to think that she had been enduring this behavior for years. It must have taken a lot of courage for her to come to me with the embezzling problem. Abusive men usually keep their women on a short leash.

I had done my duty by Tina, and I would follow through tomorrow as promised. I couldn’t pry her out of an icky relationship, but maybe, if I was lucky, I could finger whoever was stealing from her. In the meantime, it was time to spy on some of God’s blessed flock. If they were going to fling dirt, I’d best be armed.

It was a Wednesday night, so the New Millennium Bible Camp services would be open to the public. I could attend wearing my regular clothes, blend in somewhere on the expansive grounds that would be full of kids and parents on this roasting summer evening, and avoid the Meales. My plan was to find out what sort of people these Meales were and to get some dirt on them. Once I had some information, I’d have leverage when dealing with the banned book petition and future conflicts with the Meales that were sure to crop up now that the gauntlet had been thrown down.

At the very least, it would be good to get a handle on my enemies. That’s what I was telling myself as I turned right on County Road 5 and followed it south, straight across the Clitherall prairie, a little curve past Belmont Lake, and then straight again. The New Millennium Bible Camp sign on my right was handpainted wood, leaning dangerously. I had never taken notice of it before so I wasn’t sure if it was suffering from neglect or abuse.

I followed the arrow on the sign and was relieved to see that there were dozens of cars parked along the side of the road, and when I reached the end of the two-mile driveway, that the parking lot by the church was also nearly full. If my car had been any larger, I wouldn’t have been able to squeeze between the Chevy Blazer and the Ford extended cab pickup. As it was, I was forced to crawl out through my window.

Everyone was piling into the church, which indicated the service was about to start. That made it a safe bet that all three Meales were inside, leaving me to explore the grounds unattended. I walked to the nearest rise to get a lay of the land. To the east was the church, a simple white structure with red, gold, and green stained-glass windows. Straight north and nearest the lake were six cabins, as tidy as hospital beds, and east of them was a partially submerged circle of benches and a pulpit. The furniture was in five inches of swampy water, as if God had sent the flood prematurely and washed his flock away mid-worship. To the west was the main hall where they likely held assembly, meals, and public affairs. Farther up the hill, between the main hall and the cabins, was a house that I presumed was the Meales’ residence.

“It’s as fine as frog’s hair, isn’t it?”

The voice startled me, and I turned to see a woman in her mid-thirties, with a beatific smile on her face. “What is?”

“The Bible camp. It was closed for three years before Pastor Meale brought it back to life last fall, bless him. He put all his own money into painting it and getting wheelchair ramps for his wife set up. He is a beacon of faith and fellowship.”

“You live around here?”

She offered her hand. “I’m so sorry! I should have introduced myself. My name is Christina Sahlberg. I live right over on Spitzer Lake. Are you here for the service?”

“I am. I’m new. Could you direct me to the church?”

“Silly, it’s right over there.” She pointed at the building at the bottom of the hill. The line of her finger led directly to the back of a man entering the church, and he appeared to be wearing a cape. It must have been Weston Lippmann, tick curator and fellow bird-fearer. I wouldn’t have pegged him for a churchgoer.

“Of course. Well, thank you.”

“I am but a humble shepherd.” She floated off toward the main hall, and when she was out of sight, I snuck around to the cabins so I could peek into the windows. All six of them were set up like typical resort cabins, with one main room housing the kitchen, living, and dining spaces, and three bedrooms off of the central room, each with two, three-level bunk beds.

I passed the sunken log circle to the east, noticing the hand-hewn logs in a horseshoe shape around the humble pulpit. My movements made the sunning turtles plop into the water. Something about the space was eerie. Maybe it was the wetness of it in this time of drought, as if it had intentionally been built underwater. Up close, it looked lascivious, like the wet smile of a dirty and prune-faced old man. I marched back across the gravel road winding through the camp and straight west to the main hall. I could hear singing coming from inside, and wondered if there was a junior service going on for the kids attending camp for the week.

No one appeared to be watching me, but I chose caution and darted around to the back of the building before peeking in, scaring up dust as I scuttled. I slid up the side of the building and peered in an open window, settling my fingers on the splintered wood of the sill. Body heat and rhythmic singing poured out.

At first, I couldn’t make sense of what I saw. There were at least fifty children, ranging in age from about five to their late teens, and they were all wearing camouflage pants or shorts and T-shirts. The group was mostly male, and they were in various stages of prostration, ripping their clothes, bowing, and throwing their hands up in the air.

Through the cracked window, I could smell sweat and incense, and the organic tang of hardworking farmers’ kids.

“Are you a warrior for Jesus?”

The rhetorical question came from a female voice in the front, and by hugging the rough outer wall, I saw it was Alicia Meale. She looked different from my last sighting of her, her face intense and luminous, even with her eyes closed in rapture. The crowd of kids raised their hands and swayed—some moaning, others spouting rapid gibberish.

“I said, are you a warrior for Jesus!”

This earned a rallying cry, and I noticed a young boy, about six, hitting the side of his head with his right fist as he stared, rapt, at Alicia. “I will fight for Jesus!” he yelled. Forty-plus voices agreed with him.

“Are you ready to do as Jesus asks?”

“We are!”

“And you will lead the way for the righteous, and shoot down the unbelievers who block your path?”

“So sayeth the Lord!”

“Then you are always welcome in Christ’s Church of the Apocryphal Revelation!”

Christ’s Church of the Apocryphal Revelation? I had never heard of them, but I was pretty sure they weren’t Lutherans. I scoured the large room for any familiar faces, maybe a regular from my story hour at the library, but didn’t see anyone I knew. The whole scene felt about as agreeable as a high-speed enema.

“I thought you were looking for the church?”

I spun around, my heart gyrating like a go-go dancer on pay day. “Hi, uh, Christina. I guess I got a little lost.”

Her eyes glittered at me, sharp and hot. “Let me walk you to the church. And I didn’t catch your name.”

I made to follow her, but she stood her ground until I led the way. She felt dangerous at my back. “I’m just visiting. Getting a feel for the grounds. You know, trying to choose a church.”

“Your name?”

“Mary Catherine Gallagher.”

“Are you a believer?”

“I certainly am.” It wasn’t a lie. I did believe in something, just probably not the same thing as her. “You really have a lovely camp here, but I guess I better get going. So many churches, so little time.”

She stopped, her arms crossed at her waist. “I hope to see you back again, Mary Catherine. God watches over us all.”

“Thank you, Christina.” I backed away until I was beyond pouncing distance and when I turned, felt her eyes burn an X across my back. It was all I could do not to run to my car. The Ford pickup had left and so I could open my door. When I crawled in, I risked a peek back, and there she was, standing like a scarecrow, her arms still crossed at her waist, watching me.

I started my car, not-so-stealthily rolled up the windows, locked the doors, and squealed out. Well, it was a 1985 Toyota hatchback. I whined out. I considered stopping at Bonnie & Clyde’s to cleanse my scarred soul but decided it would be cheaper to drink at home. In fact, getting deeply drunk tonight in front of the TV, and then every night until I moved away from this freakish coil of a town in a week and a half, sounded like a brilliant plan. Let Sarah Ruth deal with the petition and the police deal with Lucy’s murder.

When I pulled into my driveway, an unfamiliar car was parked in the shade of the gigantic lilacs in the center of the turnaround. Luna ran out and snuffled my hand.

“Who’s here, girl? Who is it?”

My dog smiled at me, and I returned the look, until I saw the dark-haired woman come around the corner of the house, her expression indecipherable.

“Mom?”

She held out her hands. “Mira.”

I stood my ground. My mom and I had talked on the phone in June but hadn’t seen each other in over a year. She had never visited me in Battle Lake, and I felt territorial, off-balance. “What are you doing here?”

Her hands hovered in the air like two premature greeters at a surprise party and then dropped to her side. We had the same eyes, gray and serious. We were also the same height and build, but her dress and hair were conservative, particularly against my tank top and Indian skirt. “I’m sorry. I wanted to see you. I should have called. Is this the dog you’re sitting for, Luna?”

I wasn’t letting her off the hook. “Why’d you want to see me?”

“I don’t know, Miranda, because you’re my daughter? Because you call me in June and tell me you’ve been beaten up and haven’t called since? Because you’ve been here since March, living not even a hundred miles from me, and I don’t know what your house looks like?”

Luna whimpered between us. My mom and I also had the same voice. “You might as well come on in, then. I have plans tonight, though, so you can’t stay long.”

I strode past her, and she quietly followed me inside. “This is the living room, over there is the kitchen, my bedroom and bathroom are off this door, and the spare bedroom and office are over there.”

“Tiger Pop!” Mom held out her hands to my kitty, and the traitor ate it up. She hugged him and scratched his eternal ear itch. “I can’t believe how healthy he looks! How old is this cat?”

“Thirteen.” I glared at him.

“And your house looks really beautiful. Clean. You must love it out here.”

I didn’t want to tell her I was moving. I didn’t want her to be here. It felt too close, too unexpected, and besides, she always brought the specter of my dad with her. We had pushed through some barriers via a phone conversation, but having her in my house was too much, too soon. “It’s fine.”

“Can I see your gardens?” She set Tiger Pop down and strode out before I could object.

“It’s been dry,” I said defensively.

“Oh, Mira! They’re gorgeous! Look at the size of your tomatoes. And you have fresh dill. Are you going to can this year? You could come home. We could can together.”

“I am home.”

“Of course.” She looked down at her feet.

“Mom, why are you here? Why today?”

Her smile fled. I witnessed her fifty-four years grind down on her with all their weight, and she laid it out between us like rotten food. “I have breast cancer, Miranda. I found out last week. I didn’t want to tell you over the phone.”

The earth grew papery underfoot. I had ditched Paynesville as soon as I graduated, and I had deliberately left behind as many memories as I could, determined to craft my own life from that point on. Suddenly, though, long-forgotten mental pictures were leaking out. My mom pushing me on our tire swing when I was five, or staying up to read to me when I had chicken pox in eighth grade, or driving me to my first dance, the one where the boys stood on one side of the gym and girls on the other. With those memories came a glimpse of my dad before his drinking got bad, bringing home a calico kitten for me, laughing with me as it pounced at the air. “How bad?”

“Not bad. They caught it early.” She smiled, almost apologetically, and brushed her hair back from her face in a gesture I recognized from my childhood. “I start chemo in three weeks, and the prognosis is good. I should be fine, Mir, with God’s grace. I just thought you deserved to know. Face to face.”

Tears and angry words fought for escape, one climbing on the back of the other to reach my head. The angry words won. “What am I supposed to say to that?”

She came over and held me while I stood rigid. “You don’t need to say anything. I came by to let you know, that’s all, and to say I love you. You have a home whenever you need it.”

I nodded stiffly. “I know.” It was petty, horrible petty, but I couldn’t tell her I loved her. Not right then.

“Mira, look at me. I’m going to be fine. This is just a wake-up call, that’s all. Life’s short. I would like to see you more. What do I need to do to make that happen?”

Suddenly, the whole outdoors were too big, and I could feel myself disconnect and spray out. It was terrifying. “I need time.”

“How much?”

“I don’t know. I need to process this. I’ll call you in a few days, okay?”

Her smile was small, but it had a flash of hope in its corners. “Okay. You call me next week.” She waved at the pets. “Bye Luna! Bye Tiger Pop! You take care of each other. Love you, Mira. You’re a good person.” She wiped my cheek, got in her car, fastened her seat belt, and drove away.

I walked into the house, straight to the bathroom, and yanked out the bottle of tequila. It was supper time, and I was going for liquid nourishment. I took two big swigs and held the bottle up. “Here’s to you, Mom and Dad.” I kept the bottle in my hand, ripped the Tank Girl CD out of my rack, and cranked it to full volume. Between the liquor and the music, I was going to drown out the raw truth, that I had realized I wanted my mom in my life more than anything—at the same moment I discovered she wasn’t going to live forever. I suppose that possibility was what I had been running from since I moved to the Twin Cities after graduation, and it had hunted me down and found me all the way in Battle Lake. It was frightening. By the time the sun was taking its unrelenting heat to another part of the world, I was toast.

“Luna? Tiger Pop? You wanna help me garden?” They weren’t in the mood to enable, so I tripped outside, fighting the tilting earth. “You’re a pretty big weed,” I said, reaching for the base of my tallest tomato plant. It took three tries before I had it out of the ground, ripe fruit busting around my feet like bloody bombs.

“And you. You’ve never been anything but trouble.” Up came the Brussels sprouts, followed by a broccoli, two cabbages, and a whole row of onions, their green stems turned to brown as they were getting ready to set up for winter. When my arms were too tired to rip, I stomped, feeling vegetables go flat and dead under my shoes.

“And thanks for all the help planting, Johnny. You’ve really been a big, stand-up, follow-through kind of guy.” I leapt in the air and came down on a watermelon. It was hard, and I rolled off, landing with a painful thud. I wiped myself off, nodded at my double-

vision gardening, and went inside. I made it as far as the couch before blacking out.

___

“Luna? Huh? Luna?” The licking wouldn’t stop, and when I rolled over to push her away, my skin felt tight and sticky. I raised myself up on shaky arms and the room shifted under me. My heart was tripping oddly and I could have woken up in Marrakesh for all that I recognized my surroundings. The room was hot and close, and the sun was already two clicks off the horizon. It must be near eight a.m. Luna continued to lick me patiently, bringing me back to myself.

I recognized the couch, and the house, and when I pulled myself up and lurched outside, I recognized the front lawn. My stomach shifted, and I had to swallow hard to keep everything down. “I must have tied one hell of a one on,” I said to Luna, who was still by my side. She looked at me sadly. I returned the look and saw the white bumps on my arms. Tomato seeds? I stared, and squinted back at my garden. I sensed it, a fiend lurking in the back of my brain, some horrible news about to break through and burn my life down. I stumbled down to my hand-tended plot, the center of my summer universe, my one saving grace.

My garden. It was destroyed. It looked like an elephant had rolled in it, grazed in it, danced in it. There were a few spindly vegetables still in the ground, tilting precariously, but they were so denuded it was impossible to tell what sort of plant they had been. Whole onions lay scattered like dirty pearls, and green leaves were stomped into pulp. I wept at what I had done, and then cried harder when I remembered that my mom had breast cancer. I cried so hard that I got hiccups, and when my throat was hoarse and my body was as dry as the air around me, I went into the house and gathered up all the liquor. I even pulled my secret stash of whiskey from the desk drawer in the office.

I crashed the bottles into the burning barrel and lit them up into a whooshing blaze. Mrs. Berns’ words, don’t do nothing for a man, whispered to me, and I listened to them. I was done with drinking. It had killed my father and wormed its way into my life, but his problem wasn’t going to be mine. I had been here before, but I wasn’t ever coming back to this spot.

When the flames burned themselves out, I turned to my pillaged, heartbroken, betrayed garden, my head thick and raw. I picked what whole vegetables I could find and gathered enough to fill two bags. I made a pile of the plants I had killed and burned them also. When it was all said and done, I was left with two live tomato plants, the carrots and potatoes, and one helluva hard watermelon.

A clean start. That’s all I wanted. A clean start.

Mrs. Berns and Sarah Ruth sensed my strange, impenetrable mood and left me alone for the morning shift. I worked robotically and grieved what I had done. What could I ever do to make up for getting trashed and destroying my garden? Hurting the earth was the worst thing I could do, because there was no one to forgive me.

“You should go get some lunch.”

“I’m not hungry, Mrs. Berns.”

“I am. Will you please get me a bagel?”

“You hate bagels.”

“Not as much as I hate mopey, pain-in-the-ass, black-mood girls. I don’t know what put you in this funk, but Sarah Ruth and I need a break from it. Take a walk.”

“Fine.” The coffee shop was as good a place as any to hate myself. I grabbed the grocery bag of peppers, onions, and tomatoes and shuffled over to the Fortune Café. My plan was to share my abused vegetables with Sid and Nancy, the owners of the Café. They had been in business together in Battle Lake for five years, but they’d been a couple at least two decades. The Café’s front room was a coffee shop and their back room was a combination library-computer room-visiting space. I had played many a Scrabble game with Sid in the back, her vocabulary a fair match for mine. The three of us were solid friends, though I was closer to Sid than to Nancy, and I felt my shame sink even deeper as I walked into their store, the inviting smell of cinnamon and coffee washing over me.

“Hey Mira!” Sid smiled from behind the counter she was washing as I entered. The lunch rush had already come and gone, and except for a three-seat table of tourists near the front, the place was empty. I normally felt comforted by the surroundings—forest-green-and-white-tiled floor, blonde wood tables, and white walls hung with watercolors of flowers and country schoolhouses. Now, the familiarity somehow increased my guilt.

“Hi.”

“Jeez, you look rough. Catch a summer cold?”

“Maybe.”

She stopped washing the counter and crossed her arms in front of her. “Maybe? There something you want to talk about?”

I couldn’t meet her eyes. “You ever do something so bad that you could never fix it?”

Sid studied all the vegetables I had placed in front of her, then looked at me with a glimmer of understanding under her graying eyebrows. “This is an awful lot of vegetables all at once, some of them not ripe. You get a storm out there?”

“Of sorts.”

Sid sighed. “No, I never did anything so bad I couldn’t fix it, and if you’re still alive, neither have you.”

I snuffled. “What if it was really bad?”

“Like attacking your own garden?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you apologize to your garden, you replant what you can, and you figure out what made you so crazy.”

“I already know.”

“I figured you did. Anything you can do something about?”

I thought about my dad, my mom, the dead cheerleader, Johnny with his sweet blue eyes and strong hands. “Maybe.”

“Then I suggest you stop feeling sorry for yourself and start doing.” She wiped her hands on her apron decisively and grabbed my hand. “Come here. I have something to show you. Nance, can you watch the front? I’ll be right back.”

She led me upstairs, to her and Nancy’s living quarters. I had spent plenty of time with her in the lower half of the building but had never been to the second level. This section of the house was as neat as the downstairs, with a separate kitchen, bathroom, living room, and bedroom. The country-fancy look of the Café was not duplicated on this level. Everything up here was clean lines, hardwood floors, and pale denim-colored walls. The smell of baking bread wafted up through the cracks, but it wasn’t as strong, and there was a clean soap scent up here that cut through it.

Sid led me into the bedroom and opened the dark oak chest at the foot of her bed. She rifled through the deep container, smiling fondly as she brought up a box of pictures.

“Have a seat,” she said, indicating the white, yellow, and blue patchwork quilt on the bed. “I’m going to show you something that I’ve never shown anyone but Nancy.”

“Your senior photo?”

“Worse.” She handed over a Polaroid of a charred building, its supporting beams sticking up like blackened bones. I held it close, sniffing for charcoal.

“What is it?”

“My parents’ garage.”

“Oh my god! Was anyone hurt?”

“No. My mom and dad were on vacation, and that’s why I burned it down that day.”

“You burned down your parents’ garage?”

“To the ground. I destroyed their minivan, all the pictures they had in storage in the garage attic, all their gardening tools. Burnt it all to the ground.”

“Why?”

She sat heavily on the floor with a mix of sadness and humor in her eyes. “I was pissed off. I was a teenager, and I had been trying to come out to them for years. They wouldn’t hear me, and so I thought I would do something they couldn’t ignore. Pretty stupid, huh?”

“Did they listen to you?”

“No. And they still haven’t. They prefer to think of me and Nancy as ‘roommates.’ They also didn’t press charges against me for torching the garage, they didn’t claim any insurance, and they paid the fire station’s bills. We all just acted like nothing happened. They probably thought they were doing me a favor, but it was the shittiest thing they could have done.”

“Did you tell them you were sorry?”

“Eventually, after many, many years of feeling horrible for burning their memories. It was after I figured out I didn’t need their approval that I could finally apologize and mean it. Even better, I forgave them. And I saved a picture so I’d never forget where I’d been and how far I’ve come, and so I never go back. We make mistakes, Mira. We learn, we change what we can, and we forgive ourselves, as hard as it is. That’s life.”

I felt an interior weight shift. It didn’t go away, but it didn’t feel so heavy anymore. “You’re a wise woman.”

“You’re not so bad yourself.” She treated me to a smile like balm and packed up the picture. On the way back downstairs, she also offered some juicy gossip. “By the way, you know the new family at New Millennium Bible? The Holier Thanthous?”

“The Meales?”

“That’s them. You’ll never guess what happened this morning. Their daughter, Alicia, the one who looks like a young Lynda Carter?”

“I wouldn’t go that far, but yeah.”

“She was in this morning. Nancy caught her stealing a bag of biscotti. Can you believe that!”

Nancy met us at the bottom of the stairs at the mention of her name, wiping her hands on her apron. “Yah, caught her red handed. And do you know what she said to me? She said she was just putting it into her purse so it’d be easier to carry to the counter.”

“You didn’t believe her?”

“That’s like the lion telling the antelope it’s just going to clean its hind end. I told her I was going to call the police, and she threatened me with the Liberty Law School. Said it was started by Jerry Falwell and was turning out lawyers only too happy to deal with people like me.”

I smiled for the first time that day. “Coffee shop owners?”

“I guess. That one is wicked.”

That about summed it up, as far as I could tell. “So what’d you do?”

“Let her go. We don’t need the trouble.” Nancy straightened her apron, squeezed Sid’s hand, and headed back to the front counter. On her way, she hollered over her shoulder at Sid. “Did you ask her yet?”

I looked from Nancy to Sid. “Ask me what?”

“A favor. I know you’re busy with two jobs, but we’re hoping you can open up the Café tomorrow. Nancy’s sister is having surgery in Fargo later today, and we want to stay overnight so she isn’t alone.”

“Anything serious?”

“Not too bad. Just gallstones. She doesn’t have any other family close by, though, so we want to be there.”

My dearth of family felt sharp for a moment, but the pang was replaced by my bounty of friends. “Of course I’ll open up. I can’t promise to do any baking, though.”

“We’ll have it all stocked up for you, and a sign saying that the fancy coffees will need to wait. We’re planning on being back by 10:00, so you’ll be able to skedaddle to the library before Mrs. Berns turns it into a house of ill repute.”

“Perfect.” As I collected keys and opening instructions, I warmed inside. Action felt good, as did helping my friends. Sid was right. I needed to fix what I could, starting with finding that dirt on the Meales I had yet to uncover. It was bad enough they were messing with the library—I wasn’t going to let Alicia mess with my friends, too. I had promised Ron I would head out to New Millennium Bible Camp this afternoon to check out the Creation Science Camp, and my very innocent reporting for the Battle Lake Recall would be a perfect cover for some earnest snooping. Once I tipped that playing field, I could work on repairing my garden.

Sid gave me an overview of the till before sending me on my way with a free, sun-dried tomato and Greek olive cream cheese bagel and some parting words.

“Hey, you know why Lutherans hate premarital sex?”

“Why?”

“They’re afraid it’ll lead to dancing.”

I left ten pounds lighter and decided to take advantage of my lunch hour to visit 4Ts and place another check in my “good deeds” column. I worked on the chewy bagel as I trudged through the kiln-like air, sweat beads gathering at my hairline and separating to race down my neck. I pulled my V-necked T-shirt from my chest and peered down at the rivulet forming between my A-cups.

“I wouldn’t hold my breath, darlin’. If they haven’t grown yet, it doesn’t do any good to water ’em.”

“Hi, Kennie.”

“And didn’t I tell you to stop by my house? I have a business deal that I know you’re going to want to get in on.”

I thought back to our conversation in the library and realized she had in fact invited me to her house, but I had been too distracted by the petition to react properly. Visions of topless octogenarians, pre-assembled penis enlargement devices, and a walkie-talkie-sex service scuttled through my brain, and all the apprehension I should have felt the first time she mentioned a “business deal” came at me like a swarm of mosquitoes. “Why don’t you just tell me what it is right now? I’ve got a minute.”

“Nope. You’ve gotta see the demo model at my house.”

Jesus. It was the penis enlargement device. I was sure of it. “I’m not much of an entrepreneur.”

“I just want to know if I can display one in the library. Once you see it, you’ll want one for yourself, and who knows? You might decide to invest. I tell you, it’s gonna be big.”

What a great motto, I thought to myself. And if I could blow off Kennie just a couple more times, I’d be able to make it out of Battle Lake without ever seeing her latest “business proposition.” “I’ll come over tomorrow morning, ’kay? I have to open up the Fortune for Sid and Nancy, and then I’ll stop by before I open the library.” There wouldn’t be time, but she didn’t need to know that.

“You won’t be sorry, darlin’!” She wiggled her fingers at me and marched off in the other direction, the spangles on her sequined tank top catching the sun and turning her into a strolling disco ball. The brightness was probably for the best, as her blinding shirt made it nearly impossible to see her Daisy Dukes, or, on Kennie, ill-fitting denim underwear. I could fool myself that it was a trick of the glare on my eyes and not the outline of a terrifically deep butt crack showcased in distressed, acid-washed denim that I saw as she disappeared around the corner by the bank.

I entered the cool interior of 4Ts and made my way around the milling shoppers. I recognized Kaitlyn near the front window, the well-proportioned blonde teenager from my first visit. The short, bubble-nosed brunette behind the counter must be Lydia. I made my way over to her and prepared to tell a little white lie.

“Hi, are you Lydia?”

She smiled at me. Her eyeteeth were unusually skinny, giving her mouth a quirky, friendly appearance despite the haunted look in her eyes. “Yup. Can I help you?”

“I’m Mira James. Lucy worked for me at the library. I wanted to say I was sorry about her death. I heard you two were good friends.”

Her upper lip quivered. “Yeah.”

“Did she make it to cheerleading practice the day before, um, before she was found?”

“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.

“Mira! I can’t believe you made it! That is so awesome!”

I eyeballed her, my short supply of patience sapped by this alien atmosphere. “Cut the shit, Alicia. I don’t like you, you don’t like me, and nobody wants me to be here.”

Alicia stepped out of her good cheer like it was an ill-fitting sweater. “Suit yourself. ‘Do unto others what you would want them to get for you.’”

“I think that’s ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’”

Alicia scowled. “You might work at a library, but that doesn’t mean you know The Book. Don’t correct me.”

“Hm. How about I lend you some money?”

“What for?”

“So you don’t have to steal anymore.”

“Did those bitches at that jewelry store say I was stealing? Oh, I’ll be on their asses so quick.”

Stealing from the jewelry store? This woman was a piece of work. “Actually, I wasn’t referring to the jewelry store, though I guess that means you tried to rip them off, too. I don’t think Jesus likes thieves.”

“You know what Jesus doesn’t like? He doesn’t like gay, Bible-bashing, bad-book-reading false witnesses like you. My dad is going to shut you down, you know? He’s going to bring lawyers from Liberty College to the library, and they’re going to bring so much media with them that you won’t even be able to get to the front door. Everyone is going to know what sort of filth you buy and promote with their tax dollars. Everyone.” Her face was turning an unattractive purple, and I felt my own mug darken to match hers.

“I’m not doing anything wrong. It’s a library, and they’re books.”

“Then why are you shaking?”

I clenched my fists to still my hands. I was angry, but I was scared, too. Had I really gotten the library in trouble? “I guess I’m just overcome with God’s love. Thank you for showing me the way.” I turned on my heel and marched out, but my tail wasn’t between my legs. It was checking the wind, and when I saw it was clear, I scurried over to the Meales’ house behind the assembly hall. I was either going to find something to shed a true light on this whacko family, or I was going to poop under their sink.

My heart pattered around my rib cage as I strode toward the tiny white house and up the wheelchair ramp. My ears were extra large and set on rotate, scanning for that first, “Hey you! You can’t go in there!” But I heard no such warnings, which I took as tacit permission to enter. I yanked open the screen door and strolled into the combination kitchen and dining room. Not surprisingly, it was spic and span. No sub-par wives here. Off the kitchen was a living room featuring a threadbare sectional couch with a mismatched recliner. There was one bookshelf sagging with religious texts, next to a modest-sized television. Three doors and a stairway led off the living room. The first doorway was a bathroom, and the second one opened to a bedroom. A quick glance indicated it was Alicia’s. The bedspread was orange with pink flowers; there was a romance novel with a florid cover on the nightstand; and the clothes neatly hung in the closet looked like Alicia’s size.

I rifled through the two storage boxes in the closet, sure I could hear a giant stopwatch in the sky ticking off the moments until I was caught. I wasn’t going to stop, though, until I found something. Unfortunately, the boxes were no help. They both contained ribbons from track and home economics, high school yearbooks, and dolls. At the bottom of the larger box was a tidy collection of slut clothes—spandex tank tops, miniskirts, and heels. I was not surprised at this evidence of a double life for Alicia. I had seen both sides of her already.

I hurried through the dresser drawers, starting with the small one. All women hide the good stuff in their underwear drawer, and Alicia was no exception.

“Bingo,” I whispered, pulling out a dime bag of weed. I thought for a moment what I could do with this information. I’d get personal satisfaction from telling her dad or the cops, but how would I explain that I knew she had pot in her dresser drawer? I settled for spritzing her feminine deodorant spray all over the grass. Mmm-mmm. Baby-powder-fresh marijuana. The spray probably wouldn’t kill her, but it’d give her one mother of a headache when she smoked it. I never claimed to be above pettiness.

I cruised into the last room on this floor—the master bedroom on the north side of the house. I bypassed the bed, which was watched over by a sad-faced Jesus on the wall, and made straight for the mission-style dresser. The top was covered with baby photos of a cute baby girl with thick black hair and brown eyes, and she was about nine months old in all of them. A framed birth certificate stood at the center with Alicia Marie Meales’ name stamped on it in cursive letters. I studied the birth certificate, surprised to discover that Alicia was in fact twenty-four years old, a good four years older than I would have guessed. I looked back at the pictures of the brown-eyed baby, recalling that the Alicia Meale I had just spoken to had cornflower blue eyes, the light kind you can’t get with colored contact lenses. Who was the baby in these photos? I snapped a shot of one of the baby pictures and the birth certificate with my digital camera.

I was reaching for the smallest drawer in the dresser when I heard voices right outside the open window. My heart stopped, and then galumphed forward. I crouched down, but the voices didn’t move on, so I crawled out of the bedroom and to the front door. Straining, I could still hear the rhythm and tones of a man and a woman talking outside the Meales’ bedroom window on the far side of the house, and it sounded like they were fighting. Was it the pastor and his wife?

At this point, I had two choices. I could try to sneak out and hope they didn’t come around and see me, or I could stand up and walk out proudly like I was supposed to be here. I voted for the latter, and before I could talk sense into myself, I popped up, pulled open the screen door, and ran straight into Battle Lake Police Chief Gary Wohnt.

“Oof.” That’s the sound he made as I barreled into his side, bounced off, and fell onto my bumper.

“Oh, jeez,” I said. “I’m totally sorry. I didn’t see you there.”

Gary stared at me through his mirrored glasses and offered me his hand. It was strange to see him out of uniform. He seemed smaller in his white T-shirt and khaki shorts, but he was still a solid man, and he looked angry as a bear. His lips were pulled tight, reflecting sunlight off their Carmexed surface, and his black hair was slicked back with gel. “What’d you hear?”

I wasn’t sure I’d heard him right. “What am I doing here?”

My question threw him off, and as he darted a glance over my shoulder, toward the back of the house, I realized it must have been him I heard arguing outside the Meales’ window. Me running into him had been an unhappy accident, and I moved from defense to offense. “Who were you talking to?”

Gary squeezed his hands into fists, and he grew a little taller. “What were you doing in the Meales’ house?

“I asked first.”

“I wasn’t breaking the law.” It was a less-than-subtle trump card.

“I was looking for a bathroom?”

“In someone’s house.”

My story picked up a couple decorations. “The one in the assembly hall was full, and I didn’t want to miss any of the inspiring exchanges going on inside. I thought this was one of the cabins. Certainly, the pastor and his wife can spare a little toilet paper.”

“So you knew this was their house you were breaking and entering?”

Ooh, he was good. “I didn’t know until you just told me. It looks just like one of the cabins. Besides, there was no breaking going on, just entering. No harm, no foul.”

I tried to brush past, but Gary caught my arm in a grip as tight as a handcuff. “You were at the murder scene in Clitherall.”

“I was.”

“How’d you end up there?”

I decided to tell him the straight truth, that I followed a police car, thinking it had been a friend of mine who had been hurt. It was hard to tell whether or not he bought it, his red-brown face impassive behind the sunglasses. Not for the first time, I wondered what frivolous, fickle Kennie and he talked about, and what sort of sex life they could possibly have had. Did he take off his sunglasses in bed? Did he whisper in her ear? Not anymore.

“That’s it? You don’t know anything more about Lucy Lebowski?”

I shook my head. “She’s worked at the library for a couple months. She was a sweet kid, and I can’t believe anyone who knew her would hurt her. Got any leads?”

He snorted, but for a millisecond, I was sure he was going to let something spill. Unfortunately, Sarah Ruth chose that moment to appear.

“Mira! I was hoping I’d run into you here.”

“Hey. How’d the library closing go?”

“Just fine. No problems at all.” She gave Gary a quizzical expression. He did his best impression of a statue.

“Sarah Ruth, this is Gary Wohnt. He’s chief of police at Battle Lake. Gary, this is Sarah Ruth. She’s going to be running the library soon.” This was probably the first that Gary had heard I was moving, but he didn’t seem to be surprised. In fact, he didn’t seem to be breathing.

Sarah nodded at him. “We’ve met. We both attend services here.” She fidgeted and turned her attention to me, but not before I picked up on a silent communication passing between them, some shift in the air or the tilt of their heads. “Have you gotten a chance to see the Science Fair?”

Gary took that as a cue to leave, striding toward the assembly hall. “I didn’t see much science, but I did take a gander at the projects inside. Can I ask you something? You work at a library, and you read a wide variety of books. As an educated person, how can you support a church that would host a Creation Science Fair?”

Sarah Ruth draped her arm over my shoulder and steered me toward the assembly hall. “I take some of it, like the faith and fellowship, and leave the rest, like the talking in tongues and good wives/bad wives stuff. Here, I feel like I’m part of a community.”

“A community that thinks women should be in the home and evolution is a joke?”

“Come on, even you don’t know how evolution got started. Who’s to say that it wasn’t part of God’s master plan?”

I pulled away. “You know, I think I’ve had enough religion for one day. You go on without me.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure. See you at work tomorrow?”

“Sounds good.”

I couldn’t miss the easing of her expression as I walked toward my car, and it made me sad. I liked Sarah Ruth, and I wanted her to be a free thinker. I suppose there was a lot I didn’t know about her. One thing was for sure, though: I had lied when I told her I’d had enough religion for the day. My next stop was going to be Nordland Lutheran Church in downtown Battle Lake. I didn’t know Pastor Harvey Winter personally, but Sid and Nancy, regular congregants of the church, said he was a stand-up guy. I wanted to get his perspective on this new Bible camp, and maybe shed some light on the warriors for Jesus tableau I had witnessed the other night.

I wasn’t sure if pastors kept regular business hours, but was happy to find the church unlocked. I had long admired the building—compact, constructed of old-fashioned brick, and shaped like a one-room schoolhouse until the large addition had been tacked on to the back. The church was on Lake Street, the main drag in Battle Lake, and its location promised standing-room only on summer Sundays. It was originally a Baptist Church, and in the early 1900s was the only church that offered services in English. That congregation had moved on, and now the church was Lutheran.

When I pulled the door open, I was soothed by the rush of cool air and smell of fresh flowers and lemon furniture polish. The original section of the church was 125 years old, and it had that serene, solid feeling of lasting architecture and gathering people. The bulletin board in the foyer was covered with flyers, but there was no furniture except for a worn bench. I walked forward, reluctant to enter the church-y part, when I heard the echo of a distant conversation down the stairs to my right.

I followed the voices down the cement stairs, into the musty basement, past a cafeteria and kid’s playroom, and to a wooden door with a large, smoked-glass pane in the top center. “Pastor Winter” was written on the glass in two-inch black, scrolly-font letters.

“I advise you to think twice before you follow that idea. I simply cannot endorse it.”

“You’all haven’t even seen it!”

Kennie. And she was talking to Pastor Winter. I held up my hand to knock on the glass.

“…coffins outside of the church or a funeral home is…”

I held my hand still. I had missed Pastor Winter’s main point, and my curiosity was killing me. I was pretty sure the two of them weren’t talking about penis enlargement devices.

“Well, I didn’t come for your blessing, Pastor Winter. I came to seek your advice on Gary, and I guess I’ve gotten that. Good day to you.”

A huffy Kennie yanked open the door before I had a chance to pretend like I wasn’t a big ‘ol eavesdropper. “Hi, Kennie.”

She was dressed in a leather motorcycle hat and Sturgis T-shirt with the bottom middle yanked up over the front, through the collar, and back down to the bottom, turning it into a makeshift halter top. Her doughy tummy leaked over her denim skirt, and she wore silver-bell anklets above each foot. It was actually an outfit I’d wear, which made me grab the wall for support.

“You were listening in?”

“I just showed up. I didn’t hear anything. See my hand, ready to knock?”

She pursed her lips. “You still coming over tomorrow morning?”

“You betcha,” I lied.

“Good.” With that, she turned and jangled out of the basement, which left me staring at a tiny man behind an enormous wooden desk. He reminded me of a friendly mole, with a twitchy nose and kind brown eyes peering from behind reading glasses. He wore a white cotton shirt and blue jeans, and the informality of his dress caught me off guard.

“Hi, Pastor Winter? I’m Mira James.”

He smiled, stood, and offered me a hand. “Of course. The librarian. Sidney and Nancy talk about you often. It is my good pleasure to welcome you to our church.”

“Thank you.” I shook his hand and relaxed a notch. “Do you have a couple minutes? I have a dilemma I’m hoping you can help me with.”

“I’m meeting with a couple for wedding counseling in twenty minutes, but I’d be happy to talk with you until then. How can I help you?”

I had a hunch that Pastor Winter wouldn’t talk smack about religion, even if he was the gossipy type, which he clearly wasn’t. He radiated quiet confidence, and Santa Claus didn’t have better smile wrinkles. I considered lying and pretending I was putting together an article on local churches, but I wasn’t willing to fib in a holy place on such a small point. If I was going to lie in front of Jesus, it was going to be important. I’d best just come out with it. “I have concerns about the new Bible camp, the one over by Clitherall?”

Pastor Winter’s face darkened, but he didn’t interrupt.

“It’s run by the Meale family, and they’ve been stepping on some toes. They’ve started a petition to censor what books I can display at the library, and I think they’re dangerous.”

“Do you have any evidence of that?”

I thought of Alicia’s homophobic comment to Sid. I couldn’t remember her exact wording, and even if I could, it would be secondhand. Still, I felt defensive. It’s hard to justify your instincts to strangers. “No, but I did see something really disturbing out there a couple days ago. In the assembly hall, there were a bunch of kids who seemed like they were in a trance, and they were chanting about being warriors for Jesus.”

“Christ’s Church of the Apocryphal Revelation is, in many ways, a religion unto itself. They are very evangelical, charismatic, and conservative. You haven’t told me anything that is out of line with their tenets.”

“You don’t think it’s weird, turning little kids into warriors? Who are they fighting?”

Pastor Winter raised an eyebrow. “Possibly those who are judging and censoring their beliefs?”

I sighed. “Judging someone who is attacking me seems like a perfectly sensible reaction. They have no right to say what the library can and can’t carry, or what sort of people God loves and hates.”

“God loves us all, Mira, and I would encourage you to practice greater tolerance.”

I eyed him suspiciously. “Does Nordland have Apocryphal Revelation leanings?”

He chuckled. “No, this church belongs to ELCA, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. We consider ourselves the progressive arm of the Lutheran church, but there is room for all those in service of God.”

I kept pushing. “So you don’t think the Meales’ behavior is odd at all?”

“If by odd you mean out of character for charismatic believers, no, I don’t think it’s unusual. And while I support the library’s right to offer a wide variety of literature, I also support any person’s right to question that selection.”

That’s when I realized that I had come here to validate my hypothesis that the Meales were dangerous aliens, and to get Pastor Winter’s support in purging them from this town. That support wasn’t forthcoming, but I was no quitter. I tried a different tack. “Have you met the Meales?”

He hesitated. “They introduced themselves to me when they first moved to town several months ago.”

“What’d you think of them?”

“I thought they were devoted in their faith and transparent in their intentions.”

“Did you like them, or did they make you want to check for your wallet?”

“I’m sure you understand that I can’t comment on other people’s personalities.” He adjusted his glasses. “This church is a haven for all, and all have a place here.”

“Did you know they had a Creation Science Fair today?” I asked.

“I did. Science and faith are compatible.”

“Compatible, maybe; interchangeable, no. You’re not going to give me anything, are you?”

He smiled kindly. “I understand your discomfort. Encountering those different from us can be difficult, and I’m glad you felt able to talk with me about it. I encourage you to attend services here at Nordland this Sunday so you can get a feel for a different type of worship than what you encountered at New Millennium. I’m afraid I have to be going now, though.” He stood up to emphasize his point.

I also stood and offered my hand. “I appreciate your time.”

“Not at all. Please let me know if I can help you with anything else.”

As I turned to leave, I had a fleeting picture of the meek, mousy woman who had been watching the Meales so intently. “There might be one more thing. There was this woman at the Creation Science Fair today, and she looked so out of place and couldn’t peel her eyes off of Naomi Meale. Since you know most locals, I’m wondering if you know her?”

“What was her name?”

“I’m afraid I didn’t catch her name. She was a couple inches taller than me, pear-shaped, with sort of frizzy brown hair. She was overall sort of brown. I’d guess she was in her forties.”

“That could be Mrs. Meales’ sister. Sissy is what she is familiarly called, but I don’t know what her legal name is. If it was Sissy, she lives over on Hancock Lake, a couple miles from the Bible camp. On Golden Pond Road, I believe, right next door to the Krausses’ pink house. The Krausses are congregants here at Nordland.”

“Did she move here with the Meales?”

“No, she’s lived here for many years.”

“I wonder why I’ve never met her.”

“She has a job toward St. Cloud, I believe.”

“That’s one heck of a commute.”

“Many of our residents commute to jobs many miles away. They consider it a small price to pay to live in such a beautiful area. Back to your mystery woman. We can’t be sure she is the sister I am describing. Is there a reason you’re asking?”

“Not really. I just can’t get her out of my head. She looked so lonely and angry.”

“Sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”

“No, no. You’ve been very helpful. If nothing else, you’ve shown me that not all pastors are loopy.” I offered him a grin, but he didn’t take it. He nodded at me once, a bemused expression on his face, and I left the way I came. As I walked into the sun, I felt a crawling under my skin, like it was shifting over my muscles, and looked to see red welts growing on my arms. Stress hives. I needed to get out of this town.

Buoyed by Sid’s words, I spent the rest of Thursday evening making amends to my vegetable garden. I bought lettuce and radish seeds and three overgrown tomato plants on my way home, though it made me sad that Johnny wasn’t the one selling them to me. Had he started a window garden in Madison? Was he making new friends? Did he ever think about me and what could have been? I tossed my head. There was no point in carrying those thoughts around.

Under the watchful eyes of Luna, I planted the quick-growing vegetables and the gnarly, overgrown potted tomatoes in the empty patches of my garden. I’d be long gone by the time my repairs came to fruition, but it felt good to be down on my hands and knees in the dirt, visibly repairing my mistake. When I was done, it didn’t look great, but it looked better, and when I watered the plot early Friday morning, I whispered an apology and a promise.

I wasn’t used to gardening before dawn, and I was amazed at the freshness of the day. The sun wasn’t yet pinking the horizon, and nature had set aside her August cottonmouth to sparkle the grass with dew. After I watered my vegetable and flower gardens and fed and watered my kitty and dog, I stretched. I would bike to town today. The three-mile trip was hilly, but I didn’t want to interrupt the blanketing stillness of dawn by cranking up my car.

As I cruised the gravel on my ten-speed mountain bike, rocks crunching like corn flakes under my tires, I mulled over the people I would be leaving Battle Lake to. The Meales were religious fanatics and had a daughter with questionable ethics. Pastor Winter seemed like a stand-up guy, though he was a little too generous in his judgments for my taste. Sarah Ruth fit well in the library and the town. Tina at 4Ts was going through a bad patch, but I could help her deal with her embezzler, if not her husband. Weston, the tick curator, was just passing through, but that was one thing about Battle Lake that I’d really miss—how it attracted all types from all corners. Between the whacky tourists and the whackier locals, like Mrs. Berns and Kennie, I could honestly say I had never been bored in this town.

I had planned to start packing today after opening the Fortune Café for Sid and Nancy and putting in my shift at the library. I could get a couple rooms bundled up and still have time to run out to Naomi Meales’ sister’s house at Hancock Lake to see if she really was the chick I had seen at the Creation Science Fair. There was something about the intensity in her eyes that drew me, and I figured the more I did away from home, the easier it’d be to avoid drinking. Nothing like spying on strangers to keep a gal distracted.

I coasted down the last big hill on Whiskey Road before I hit Battle Lake. My hair flew behind me like wings, and I closed my eyes. Only for a millisecond, though. I had terrible balance. As I cruised into town, I was soothed by how quiet it was. I felt like I could walk into any house and grab something out of the refrigerator without the sleeping owners being any the wiser. You feel invincible in the early morning, when everyone else is so vulnerable. Getting up early might be part of my new regimen when I moved back to the Cities.

My bike glided down Lake Avenue to the Fortune Café. I smelled West Battle Lake half a mile away and imagined I could see the giant statue of Chief Wenonga around the corner, six-pack abs rippling in the morning sun, fierce eyes ever watchful over the lake. I was glad to have him back in town. He was one man I was going to miss when I moved, even if he was fiberglass.

“Morning,” I whispered in his general direction. No point in being desperate. Hot statues preferred subtlety from their admirers. I slapped out my kickstand and dug around my jean shorts pocket for the Fortune key, admiring the Café. It had originally been a cool Victorian house, full of windows and small rooms, around since the early 1900s. When Sid and Nancy bought it, they slapped a coat of sage-green paint with white trim on the outside and renovated the inside to turn the downstairs into a café/bakery and the upstairs into an apartment. I walked up the front lawn. The marigolds and lavender lining the sidewalk looked a little crusty, and I made a note to water them before I left. There was no hose on the front of the renovated house, but I saw the double tracks of a wagon in the lawn and knew I could fill up buckets with water and haul them out here.

A strong whoosh of bakery-goods odors gusted toward me, and I smiled. I couldn’t wait to get inside there and be surrounded by that heavenly cinnamon smell. As I drew in another deep breath, my hackles tapped my shoulder. The smell of baked goods should not be this strong, ten feet from the front door. Had the door been left open? My heartbeat did a little giddyup kick. The deathly quiet of the town was all of a sudden not so benign. I looked left, right, and spotted nothing out of place. I continued to the door and found it firmly locked. Shoulders still tense, I unlocked it and stuck my head in.

“Hello? Anyone here?” The fresh goodie smell was even stronger inside, and rightly so. The front room was washed in shadows and uneven rays of the rising sun peeking through the windows. I stepped toward the only light switch I was sure of, the one behind the front counter that I looked at every time I ordered food. Once the room was fully illuminated, I could shake the paranoid feeling. My hope proved to be premature, however. Three strides to the counter, and I was on my knees. I had tripped over something, and sharp glass ground into my knees and palms. I pushed off, feeling my skin pierced in thirty different spots, but I couldn’t make out what I had landed on. Panicking, I bolted toward the light switch.

Washed in light, the main room was a mess. The window facing the West Battle Lake side of the house was a gaping, jagged hole, and the floor was covered in hundreds of glass shards. I gingerly brushed them from my hands and blood-pricked knees and eyeballed the large rock I had tripped over. The rock was gray, about the size of a cooking pumpkin, and it had white paper strapped to it with twine.

The paper crinkled under my fingers as I tugged it out. It was standard 8 ½ by 11-inch white printer paper, and some unoriginal genius had cut out letters from a magazine to spell “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. Go back to Soddom, immoral heathens.” Blood from my nicked palms melted into the paper, creating a gruesome frame, and I realized I was holding my breath.

“Those fucking fuckers.” And I knew who I meant. Somebody from that whacked-out New Millennium Bible Camp had done this. Sid and Nancy had lived in Battle Lake for over five years, and people had been drawn to their warmth, their knack for baking, and their humor since day one. I imagine there were people in town who didn’t approve of Sid and Nancy’s sexual orientation, but they at least had the sense to keep their ignorance to themselves.

No, this was the first outright hateful incident that had happened at the café to my knowledge, and it didn’t take a genius to see it directly correlated to the group at the Bible camp. Sodom indeed, and spelled wrong. You’d think if someone was going to slice letters from magazines one by one, they’d take the time to check their spelling so they didn’t need to track down any unnecessary letters.

I folded up the note, shoved it in my back pocket, and went into the bakery kitchen to wash my hands and knees. I walked the whole building, bottom floor to top and back down again, and didn’t see any more damage or vitriol. Convinced that the harm was contained to the main room, I called the Battle Lake Police Department and got through on the third ring.

“Battle Lake Police.”

“Gary Wohnt?”

“Hummph.”

“This is Mira James. I’m over at the Fortune Café. Sid and Nancy asked me to open up for them this morning, and I’m afraid we have an incident on our hands.”

I heard a thump in the background and some scrabbling. Either Chief Wohnt had fallen off his chair, or he had set down the phone. When he came back on the line, his voice was Sisyphean in its weariness. “Why am I not surprised?”

“I won’t take that personally. Do you want to know what the incident is?”

“A dead body.”

He said it so matter-of-factly that I couldn’t help but snort. “Not even. Somebody hurled a rock through the north side of the café. There’s glass everywhere.”

I heard a creak, like he was sitting up in his chair. “Was there anything on the rock?”

“Like lichen?” I had decided before I called that I wasn’t going to mention the note. I knew from experience that Battle Lake didn’t have the means or the finances to fingerprint a piece of paper from a plain ol’ vandalism case. The only thing I would accomplish by telling someone about the note was to make Sid and Nancy feel bad, and possibly add fuel to the fire of the haters who had tossed it.

Chief Wohnt’s voice came over the line slowly, like he was trying to talk a three-year-old out of a tree. “No, not like lichen. Like words.”

“Hm. Lemme go check.” I marched in place so it sounded like I was walking toward something. “No. Nope. No words on the rock. Just some twine.”

“What was the twine holding?”

Shit. “Maybe it was just put on there for purchase, so the rock could be hurled farther. But what do I know? You’re the police chief, not me. You better come down and look at it.”

“Don’t touch anything.”

“Then you better get here quick because I have a coffee shop to open up.”

A grunt was my answer. I went outside to water the front flowers while I waited. There was no wagon in sight, and I didn’t know the combination to the storage shed, so I grabbed the empty, five-gallon pickle bucket from next to the back faucet, filled it to the top with icy water, and hauled it to the front. The earth soaked up the water so fast I swore I heard slurping sounds. I made three more trips with the bucket for good measure and was back inside when Gary showed up.

“Chief Wohnt.”

He didn’t have his sunglasses on. I was always startled by the blackness of his eyes, like they were two pools of oil swimming in his tanned face. It was unsettling and not his fault, and I wondered if his disconcerting eyes were the reason he usually wore the mirrored glasses. “Where’s the rock?”

“Over here.” I gestured around the corner from the entryway and into the main room. Gary knelt by the rock, turned it over, looked toward every corner of the room as if calculating distances, and chomped his way over to the broken window.

“You haven’t moved anything?”

“I might have nudged the rock when I tripped over it in the dark, but that’s about where it was.” He studied me, his head cocked, and I had to turn away. “Do you mind if I sweep this up? I told Sid and Nancy I’d have this place open by six o’clock.”

“Around here, people usually put notes on the rock before they throw it through the window.”

“You can check outside. A note could have fallen off before the rock was lobbed.” I was very careful to not exactly lie.

“I’ll do that.”

“So I can sweep up?”

“You can, but keep your eyes open for anything out of place.”

“Will do. Don’t you think it’s weird, though, that this act of vandalism happens around the same time as the Creation Science Fair out at the New Millennium?”

Gary bristled like a dog that smells a deer. “What are you suggesting?”

“Just that it seems like an awful big coincidence.”

“A lot of people come through the area in the summer. Is there something you want to tell me?” His eyes pierced into me like inky lasers.

“Nah. But maybe you’ll find something out by the window.”

Gary freed me from his penetrating gaze and stepped outside. As soon as I was sure he was out of sight, I pulled the note out of my pocket and hid it in the crack between the caramel and vanilla Italian syrups. It felt too conspicuous in my pocket, like my left butt cheek was glowing with a red X and the words “She’s hiding it in here.” When the Chief returned, I had most of the front room swept. “You find anything?”

“No. And it’s too dry for any footprints.”

“So you might have to just write this one off?”

He ignored me, again studying all the corners of the room. “You didn’t move anything?”

“It’s all still right in this room.”

He saved me another black-eyed probe. “When Sid and Nancy get back, send one of them down to the station to fill out a report. In the meantime, call Boechler’s to fix the window. With the August Moon Festival tomorrow night, we’re sure to get some rain.”

That sounded like a joke, but Gary Wohnt was as easy to read as a fish. “You going to the Festival?”

“I’ll be on duty. If you have anything to tell me, you know where to find me.”

“Uh-huh.” I made like I was real interested in a scabby piece of food crusted to the table nearest me. One beat, two beats, three beats, and Gary turned on his heel and headed out the door. I finished wiping down the counters, got some fresh coffee brewing, and had served about a third of Battle Lake by the time Sid and Nancy arrived.

All the broken glass had been cleaned up, and Harold Boechler was measuring the window. I had returned the vile (and poorly formatted) note to my back pocket and after I made sure Nancy’s sister’s operation had gone okay, I brought them up to speed on the broken window. Neither one seemed particularly fazed.

“Kids,” Nancy said, sliding her apron over her head and tying it at the waist. This one featured a sad blue and blonde Smurfette above the words, “Let My People Go.”

Sid nodded in agreement. “I heard a couple were caught spray-painting the water tower last weekend. It’s hot, the summer’s getting boring, and they’re being teenagers.”

I put on a happy face and nodded. I knew it wasn’t thrill-

seeking teenagers. They wouldn’t have bothered with a note, they wouldn’t have referenced Sodom, and they wouldn’t have targeted one of their favorite hangouts. Battle Lake high schoolers were treated with respect at the Fortune Café, an unusual experience for teenagers. The game and computer room was often full of study groups during the school year, and in the summer, the Fortune was a popular hangout for teens looking for relief from the heat. They drank their Diet Cokes and smoothies and bragged about how they couldn’t wait to escape this ten-cent town. “You guys need anything else before I head to the library?”

“We’re good. We owe you one.”

“Anytime.” I gathered up my iced coffee and breakfast bagel and braved the molten day. The temperature must have risen thirty degrees in the three and a half hours I had been in the cafe. Phew. I balanced my drink and sandwich in my bike basket and pedaled the three short blocks to the library, waving to locals I recognized on the way. When I arrived, Sarah Ruth had already opened up, her brown slacks and polo shirt a professional contrast to my T-shirt and jean shorts. I had never been one to forego comfort for rules.

Mrs. Berns was nowhere in sight, and I chose to ignore the iciness that had developed between Sarah Ruth and me the last two days. We exchanged pleasantries before I planted myself in front of the computer and typed up my article on the Creation Science Fair. I used every passive-aggressive bone in my body to walk the line between responsible journalism and reckless make-fun-alism.

On Thursday, August 19, the New Millennium Bible Camp in Clitherall hosted their first annual Creation Science Fair. The event had a real sense of community and drew over 100 people interested in the biblical view of science. Attendants were not disappointed. Featured displays included a rebuff of the theory of evolution featuring the irrefutable hypothesis, “My Great, Great Grandpa Was a Christian, Not a Monkey,” and an examination into how capitalistic structures could have been successfully applied in biblical times.

In addition, the creationists looked to the pre-literacy era for inspiration on women’s possible contributions to our current global economy. Entrants also tackled the sticky issue of teen sexuality and the hotly debated realm of thermodynamics.

All the exhibits in the Creation Science Fair displayed a bandwagon appeal and the ability to think inside the box. Pastor Meale, host of the event, said, “I take my greatest pleasure in days like today where I can touch the faithful…” Wednesday and Sunday services at Christ’s Church of the Apocryphal Revelation, the church at New Millennium Bible Camp, are open to the public.

I sent the article off to Ron as a Word attachment, along with a picture of the monkey exhibit, just to give him his second coronary this week. I’d get him used to me meeting deadlines just before I skipped town. Sarah Ruth and I made polite but distant small talk throughout the day, which was uneventful except for a visit from Weston Lippmann, tick curator. As soon as I spotted the wilted wildflowers in his hand, I got an apprehensive, sour feeling in my stomach.

“Hi, Mira!” he said cheerfully, flinging his cape over each shoulder so it rested on his back like folded bat wings. “These are for you.”

He grinned his lopsided grin as he thrust the daisies at me. They were my favorite flower next to lilacs, but I was in no mood to be courted. Heck, I was in no century to be courted. “Thank you for the flowers. They’re beautiful. I don’t date men.”

“Oh, I’m…you’re…I’m so sorry! I didn’t know.”

I grimaced. “There’s nothing to know. I’m taking a break from dating. I’d be happy to be your friend while you’re here.”

He smiled again, but it had lost its wattage. Having your offer of romance exchanged for second-hand friendship feels about as good as getting your leg humped by a raccoon. And I would know. “They’re just flowers, and you’re the only person in town I know.” He made that strange throat-clearing sound I remembered from our first meeting.

“I appreciate the gesture.” I scurried to alleviate his discomfort. “Are you going to the August Moon Festival tomorrow?”

“I hadn’t thought of it.” Now he was pouting.

“Well, you should! It’s a good time.”

A squawky voice piped up behind me. “I’ll take you to the Festival.”

I looked over my shoulder. “Mrs. Berns! When did you get here?”

“Are you suggesting I’m not a hard worker?”

The clock told me it was quarter to three, and this was the first I’d seen her. “You’ve been here all day?”

“All I’m saying is that if the boy doesn’t want to go to the August Moon Festival alone, I’d be happy to take him. Granny needs an escort.” She smiled sweetly, her perfectly even dentures glittering in the light.

Weston glanced at me, unsure how to respond. I kept my face smooth. “Sure, that would be fine,” he said. “Thank you for the offer.”

“Great, sonny. You can pick me up at five o’clock. I live over at the nursing home.” She strode off to dust the bookshelves like she had been doing it all along.

“You’ll like Mrs. Berns. She’s nice.”

“Yeah, she reminds me of my grandma.”

“Hm. I wouldn’t go that far. She’s pretty spirited. Just remember that no means no.”

He blanched. “I would never!”

“No, I mean tell her that. Sometimes she forgets and gets a little too aggressive. But if you play dead, you’ll be just fine.”

Weston looked uneasy for a moment, as if he wanted to trade in his capelet for body armor, and then he rallied gamely. “It sounds like tomorrow night will be an adventure. Can I count on seeing you there?”

I felt a rush of fondness for the man. Anyone who was open to appreciating Mrs. Berns deserved some appreciation in turn. “You betcha. I’ll be covering it for the paper.”

“Wonderful. Good day.” He did a little cape whisk, like a nebbish Zorro, and disappeared into the sunshine. I spent the rest of my shift cleaning and avoiding Sarah Ruth. Or, she was avoiding me. Either way, we didn’t talk much, and at closing time, the three of us went our separate ways.

My bike ride home was not nearly as enjoyable as my trip into town. I felt like I was gliding over a dragon’s tongue, down her throat, and into her fiery gullet. My face flushed as my body fought the humid, 103-degree heat shimmering up from the pavement like a mirage. My water bottle was full of tepid liquid, so I just kept my head down and biked as fast as I could. By the time I turned into my driveway, my hair was plastered to my neck and even my toes were sweating. I bypassed the turn off into my house and cruised down to the lake.

Luna followed, running alongside the bike down the shady driveway, her tongue lolling out the side of her mouth.

“Last one in is a fried egg!” I jumped off the bike, tires still spinning, shed my flip-flops and plunged into the refreshing water, tank top, jean shorts, and all. I stayed close to the bottom where the lake was a good ten degrees cooler than the top. The water peeled off layers of grit and fatigue, and I popped to the surface a new woman.

“Whooo!” Luna swam next to me, grinning. “Ever think of trying the breaststroke? That doggie-paddling is getting old.” She just kept smiling and treading water. I waded to shore, found some driftwood, and waded back out to waist-deep water. We played water fetch for a good half an hour, my lower half cool as a cucumber. When both Luna and I were bored and hungry, I walked my bike up to the house, dripping water onto the dusty road.

I filled Luna and Tiger Pop’s water bowls with fresh water and ice cubes and got food for them and the birds before I traded my rapidly drying clothes for a loose cotton sundress. I scarfed down a bowl of Rice Twice cereal, popped some grapes into my mouth, and set to packing. My plan was to bundle up my winter clothes, my meager decorations, including the photographs on the fridge, my cat-ears lamp, and a few watercolor paintings I’d picked up at a garage sale. I’d scrub out the spare bedroom and the spare bathroom and pile my boxes in the living room. All I’d have left to do before I left town would be to pack up my summer clothes, my toiletries, my spices, my plants, and my pet, and the doublewide would be open to the next lucky occupants.

I packed and cleaned and managed to not think about how much this doublewide felt like home. Almost. By nine o’clock, I was done. I fixed myself a pickle, provolone, and mustard sandwich on wheat, drank some bottled water, and changed into my sleuthing clothes. The summer version was black china flats, a pair of black linen pants, a black tank top, and my hair in a ponytail held with a black rubber band.

I slid a flashlight into one pocket and slid the handle of my spider knife over my waistband. The knife was über-perilous and could be flicked open with one quick twitch of your thumb. That cocky accessibility is what made it dangerous, from my end. I had already dropped it on my thigh when I was practicing my “menacing English major” stance on a camping trip and gotten a good gash. Despite my shortcomings as a gangster, I felt safer with the knife.

My plan was to drive out to Hancock Lake and park my car on the side of the road a half mile from the Golden Pond Road turnoff. There was no public access on Hancock, but it was full of bass so some fishers got around that by putting their boats in at a low spot in the road. It would not be unusual to have a car parked there. From that point, I would walk to where I thought Mrs. Meales’ sister’s house was, sticking to the woods on the uninhabited side of Golden Pond Road. There, I would do a little spying to see if I could catch a glimpse of the sister. If she wasn’t there, I might need to peek in some windows. My heart hammered pleasantly at the thought, and the sensation was a nice alternative to sitting at home, waiting to move, trying not to drink. As the sun set, I hopped into the car and went to meet my destiny.

Hancock Lake was small and clean and about three miles from New Millennium Bible Camp as the crow flies. I had rarely driven past it, tucked away as it was between County Road 5 running to Clitherall and County Road 6 running from Battle Lake to 94. You couldn’t reach it on a blacktop, which was just as well. The isolation made the area beautiful, I thought, as I parked my car next to some cattails. Golden Pond Road was a one-mile elbow about four city blocks up and on my left, and the only length of Hancock’s shores that was inhabited. The air was dark but not cool, and it smelled heavy and volatile, like gunpowder.

I strolled past what used to be Hendershot’s Snowmobile Repair. A couple from the Cities had bought the place, and they looked to have a litter of children. I had heard the couple kept to themselves, which was just as well. A walker on a warm summer night was not unusual, but I was a stranger to them, and so they would remember me if someone asked them later. Directly ahead of me, the road T-boned; if you went to the left, you’d end up at Silver Sage Riding Ranch, and if you went to the right, you’d end up at the blacktop that would take you to Inspiration Peak.

I took the left just before the T and crunched down the gravel of Golden Pond. I smelled grilling meat and crept farther to the uninhabited side of the road. The whole lane was heavily treed. On my left were seven summer cabins and three year-round houses, each sitting back from the road on one to three acres of land. On my right was a slough the size of a small lake, a little sister to Hancock on the other side. A welcome breeze licked at my shorthairs, sending a whisper through the popple trees.

When I was in front of the driveway to the house I thought Pastor Winter had described, the only year-round house next to the pink house, I crossed the road and melted into the woods skirting the driveway. The moon was bright enough that I could avoid stepping on sticks or rustling through leaves, and my passage was mostly silent. Ahead shone a single light through what I assumed was the kitchen window, based on the high cupboards illuminated inside. This side of the house facing the road looked like a single-story rambler with a two-car garage, but I assumed if I followed the driveway down its steep incline around the side of the house, I’d see it was really a walkout rambler.

There was no noise except for a distant conversation carrying over the water, an occasional cow mooing from the dairy farm across the lake, and the far-off rumble of cars. I had walked as far as I could without leaving the tree cover, about twenty feet from the house. Now I could either wait it out and see if anyone passed a window inside, or I could scurry up to the house like a summer mouse and peek in the windows. Never a creature of patience, I made to break my cover when I heard heavy footsteps from inside the dwelling.

I quickly ducked behind a tree and peeped out. The front door swung open, and a female figure stood in the doorway, backlit. A man came behind her, nuzzled her cheek, and took off down the wheelchair ramp and toward me. I concentrated on becoming one with the tree, my face pressed tight enough against the bark to leave a pattern. I dared not move, even to pull my head behind the oak, so when the man walked five feet from me on his way out the driveway, I could see his face clearly. It was Les Pastner, owner of Battle Lake’s Meat and RV, and the local, crazy-as-a-two-headed- coot militia leader.

I stayed as still as a word on a page when Les passed, and the rustle of wind through leaves covered my shallow breathing. This was good, because the more I tried to control my breathing, the more impossible it became to get air. My breath was coming out in horsy pants. Les continued down the driveway, his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his camo pants, and headed out the way I had just come.

When I could no longer hear his boots shuffling down the dry road, I took a deep breath and slid down the tree. If Mrs. Meales’ sister was the one I saw so empty but intense at the Creation Science Fair, and if this was her house, what was Les doing here? He had been affectionate with the owner of the house, and I knew for a firsthand fact that he was as well balanced as a triple-scoop ice cream cone based on a few memorable run-ins we had had in July. Did that make her certifiably crazy too?

I heard a rustle behind me and spun, expecting to see an army of militia men advancing, their beady eyes glowing under greasepaint, glued-on branches sticking out of their shoulders and heads. I didn’t see anything except moonshadows and flitting leaves. It was only a squirrel, I told my cowardly heart. I’m the only person in this forest. I decided that was one person too many. I turned to creep back the way I had come, my plan being to stick deeper into the woods so I didn’t inadvertently run into Les. I made it five whole feet before my ankle was garroted in a whip-hot grip, and I was flung ass to stars, my flashlight falling from my pocket to the warm ground below.

This booby trap had Les Pastner written all over it. I knew because the sapling the rope had been tied to didn’t have the recoil strength to lift me off the ground and dangle me in the air, like the rope traps you saw in the Tarzan movies or Looney Tunes cartoons. When I had stepped into the circle of rope, releasing whatever contraption had been putting pressure on the tree, it ricocheted upright, yanking my feet out from under and giving me one hell of a rope burn, but otherwise leaving me unharmed with my foot about two feet off the ground. I tried to undo the knot at my ankle with my hands, but it was too tight.

I was accosted by a surprise party of panic when I couldn’t immediately find my spider knife. Had it gone flying with my flashlight? Was all the circulation getting cut off from my foot? Would I have to gnaw it off and crawl to safety? Then I found the knife, nestled warm and tight between my skin and waistband. I flicked the blade, slid it delicately underneath the ankle noose, and wiggled it until it was facing toward the rope. I sawed slowly, hyper-aware of the razor edge of the blade and the fact that I was a sitting duck if Les heard my tussling and returned. I panted anxiously, feeling my heart beat rapidly against the tourniquet on my ankle. My knife cut through the rope like it was shredded wheat, and I massaged around the hot and raw skin underneath, listening for any movement around me. The woods were quiet. On a whim, I used the rope to pull the sapling toward me, cut the rope off at the tree end, too, and threw the fifteen-foot line over my shoulder. Better Les think he had misplaced his booby trap than know someone had been caught in it.

I limped back to my car, the journey taking twice as long because I couldn’t use the road or put all my weight on my left ankle. I didn’t spot Les, and I sincerely hoped he didn’t see me. Once in my Toyota, I breathed out the jittery weight of a near catastrophe. I was a weird mix of angry and relieved—mad because I had walked into a trap like a dumbass, and thankful because I had gotten out. As I drove home, I wondered who the trap had been set for. Les was well-known for his militia ways; had he indoctrinated his girlfriend into the lifestyle? And was his girlfriend Sissy, Naomi Meales’ sister? I wasn’t any wiser for my trip. In fact, my spying goal had been completely thwarted, and more mystery laid on top of it.

At the home front, I tossed the rope into a shed, watered my “I think I can, I think I can” vegetable garden, dumped fresh ice cubes in Luna and Tiger Pop’s water dishes, and fell across my bed, still wearing my spy clothes. I sat up long enough to point the fan on my face to keep the hot air circulating, and I dropped into a restless sleep. It was peppered by dreams of floods, locusts, and Winnebagos driven by lasciviously grinning pork links.

___

Saturday announced itself bright and hot as a klieg light. Tonight was the August Moon Festival, and I had a lot to accomplish before then. Sane or not, the Meale family had become my new obsession, replacing mourning and drinking and moping. They had marginalized my library and my friends, and had some crazy business going on at the New Millennium Bible Camp, and I didn’t want to leave the town in their hands. Where had they come from? Why had they left that place? Was that truly Naomi Meales’ sister living out on Hancock Lake, and was she the same woman I had seen at the Creation Science Fair? If so, what was the connection between her, Les, and the crazy Jesus warriors I had seen at the New Millennium? Between some Internet searching and a friendly visit to the Senior Sunset, I was confident I could pick up some leads.

I had an unsavory task on my list, as well. I was going to talk to Sarah Ruth and squish whatever bad vibe had developed between us. That would require an open and honest discussion, which wasn’t my forte, but I would do it for the sake of the library.

No biking for me today. It was too much work and my ankle was still sore from the rope burn. I was in the library by eight a.m. and in front of the computer. I started by Googling “Pastor Robert Meale.” The first hit was the New Millennium Bible Camp’s home page. It was a stylish page that made the camp look like a fun summer getaway for God-lovin’ kids. On its pages, groups of teens canoed on Spitzer Lake, splashing each other with paddles and laughing. They also held hands around a campfire, singing, I had to believe, “Kumbaya.” There was even a photograph of the outdoor pulpit and horseshoe seating down by the lake, but it wasn’t underwater. In fact, the lake didn’t start until several feet behind the setup in the photo. That was an oddity. Battle Lake hadn’t had a drier summer than this in half a century, and the pulpit was currently in at least six inches of lake. Had the scene been Photoshopped to make the camp look more appealing?

I scoured the site for any other strange photos, or some indication that the camp was training Jesus’ warriors for the Apocalypse, but found nothing other than a short bio on Robert Meale. It said he had graduated from the Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary and found a home at the Our Father Lutheran Church in Statesboro, Georgia, before heeding God’s direction to start Christ’s Church of the Apocryphal Revelation outside of Clitherall the previous year.

That he had begun as a Lutheran surprised me. I tracked down the Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary site. On the seminary’s home page, I chose the “Graduates” link, and opened up all the graduating class links starting with 1970. If Pastor Meale was around fifty or fifty-five, as I guessed, that would be around when he’d graduated. Each year’s link offered a grainy, black-and-white buffet of mustachioed white men in wide-collared suits. If I had a nickel for every thread of polyester on those men’s backs, I could buy a small island.

I was getting bored by the time I got to the class of 1977, but I dutifully ran my fingers over the names on my screen until, voila! Robert Meale. The gray shades of the photo were unable to hide the odd mix of arrogance in his smile and insecurity in his eyes, protected behind his enormous, shop-teacher glasses, the ones he still wore today. I eyeballed the rest of the graduates, seeing only about three guys I’d trust my cat with on a long weekend, let alone my immortal soul. I was about to click out when my vision snagged on the last man on the yearbook page. His eyes were friendly, and familiar. Harvey Winter, current pastor of Nordland Lutheran in Battle Lake, Minnesota.

I bit my lip, trying to recall our conversation word for word. Pastor Winter had been generous in his assessment of the Meales, and when I had asked if he had met them, he had said that they had introduced themselves when they first came to town. I had to give Pastor Winter props. Not only had he graduated from Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary, he had also apparently graduated from the Mira James School of Non-lying Half-truths. I didn’t know where the connection between Pastor Winter and Pastor Meale fit, but it stunk like fish guts.

I exited the Seminary page and Googled “Statesboro Georgia newspaper.” The Herald appeared. Their webpage was standard newspaper layout except for the “Worship” and “Worship Directory” links at the bottom. Since when had church become news? Both those links led to recent information and had no mention of Meale. I went into the news archives and searched his name. Still nothing, except for a mention of a missionary trip to Mozambique he headed in 1985. I was losing hope and grabbed for a piece of printer paper and stubby library pencil. Sometimes distracting myself with doodling allowed an idea to escape past my common sense filter.

The air conditioner whirred, and I felt an icy draft hit my bare calves. This inspired me to sketch a picture of a cow grazing in a field, twin calves at her side. I drew cartoonish daisies and some sprigs of grass around them. All my drawings featured big oak trees that looked more like sloppy broccoli, and this picture was no exception. I was itching for crayons and so hopped off my swiveling stool, grabbed some from the children’s section of the library, and returned to color the grass green, the cows black and white, and the daisies yellow. I used the brown crayon to color in the trunk of the tree and add a fence around the field, enjoying the warm and waxy scent of Crayolas. Behind the fence, I drew a road, and on it was a pickup truck barreling toward the field. It was going to make the cows leave. Why would someone want the cows to leave?

Duh. Of course. Leaving. Why had the Meales left Statesboro? Robert Meale had started there immediately out of the seminary and appeared to have stayed for well over two decades, according to his bio. I returned to The Herald web page, my heart skipping with anticipation. I checked the archives for local news from June, which is approximately when the Meales had moved out of Georgia, give or take a couple months. I found little of interest. I then checked the July archives, and was disappointed to find that a local $3 million lottery winner named Judah Nelson was the biggest news. I was about to give up when the August archives offered me a headline to make my heart freeze like a power line in a January sleet storm.

“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 disagree 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.

After closing up the library, I stopped at Larry’s Grocery to pick up a veggie tray for tonight’s August Moon Festival potluck. Unfortunately, the deli had been picked over by like-minded festival-goers. I settled for a family-pack of Pringles and a bag of after-dinner mints. As I turned west on 210 for the three-mile drive to Hershod’s Corn Maze, I reached for the New Orleans Mardi Gras mask on the seat next to me. I didn’t know who had come up with the idea of wearing costumes at the Festival, but I enjoyed the tradition. Being anonymous in a small town was a rare treat and lent an air of decadence to the gathering.

I crested the hill before the maze and realized I should have taken advantage of the shuttle bus ferrying attendees from Ben’s Bait to the Festival. I ended up parking three-quarters of a mile away and schlepping my Pringles and mints.

“Ah, the breakfast of champions.” I turned to the voice. It was a family walking alongside me to the maze. The father was nodding at the white-trash food I was bringing. “Larry’s sold out of deli trays?”

“Yeah, I should have planned ahead.”

“Nothing wrong with Pringles,” the mom offered. She had her hands full with a dessert tray of bars and cookies on top of a clear salad bowl full of cole slaw, ramen noodles, and sunflower seeds. The family looked vaguely familiar, but I didn’t know anyone’s names.

“I guess not, except that I look like a freeloader next to what you’re bringing. Do you all have costumes?”

The four children, all boys ranging in size from toddler to teen, held up their masks—one ninja, a Superman, a Grim Reaper, and a Spiderman. The father grinned at his brood and threw his arm around his wife. “We’re hoping the Festival brings us some rain. Our crops are thirsty.”

“You’re farmers?”

“Back three generations. We live over by Amor.”

“Well, I hope it rains for you, too.” The crowd was growing thicker, and I threaded my way under the Hershod’s Corn Maze arches, the closeness of the crowd intensifying the heat of the afternoon. The grounds were vast. The maze itself was nearly three acres resting in the center of the grounds. Butting the east side of the corn maze was a thick, hardwood forest. Directly west was an ocean of picnic tables. North of both, out of sight on the other side of the maze, was the stage where the band would be playing later.

I slid my food onto the nearest picnic table so it wouldn’t be associated with me and took stock. I counted fourteen picnic tables laden with saran-wrapped dishes, most of these thinly disguised vehicles for Cool Whip or Miracle Whip, the Whips being a west-central Minnesota food group unto themselves. I estimated over 300 people here already, milling around the food, laughing, and making loud conversation. The ground was covered in straw as golden as liquid sunshine, and the air was rich with the smell of hotdishes, fresh-baked bread, and beer. I sidestepped the kegs and made my way to the entrance of the maze.

Corn mazes are a funny concept. You take a field of close-planted, super-high, super-fast-growing, super-tough corn, the more acres the better, and you cut a series of four-foot wide paths through it. Most are dead ends, but one of the paths leads out the other side. At Hershod’s tonight, Bad Brad’s band, Not with My Horse, would be playing at the “out” end of the maze at nine o’clock. I planned to avoid him. Run-ins with exes were bad, but run-ins with cheating exes with low IQs were worse. It meant second-guessing your ability to make sound judgments every time you saw them.

The sun was beating iron-hot on my head even though it was pushing seven o’clock. The food appeared to be all set up, so I pulled on my mask and grazed from one picnic table to another until I had tried at least one item on all fourteen tables. The beauty of the Mardi Gras mask was that it only covered my eyes, so eating was easy. Pity the Richard Nixons and Spongebob Squarepants who had to leverage their food under the plastic. As more people arrived, the combination of masks, unlimited beer provided by the Chamber of Commerce, and a white-hot summer made for a festive and raucous mood. I was just about to steal away to a quieter spot where I could people-watch when a hand grabbed my shoulder.

“Mira! I was hoping I’d see you here.”

Next to me was Weston Lippmann in his trademark black cape over a red sweater vest and short-sleeved shirt, sweating furiously. Mrs. Berns was leaning against him, all white in her superhero-support outfit. Neither had a mask on, but they were definitely in costume. “You two made it!”

“We almost didn’t.” Weston shot Mrs. Berns an odd smile, the kind you give to a host who has just served you jellied clams. It was a mixture of forced politeness and fear. “Mrs. Berns wanted me to stop at the Senior Sunset to look at her room.”

Mrs. Berns winked at me and took a chug off one of the two cups of beer she was holding.

Cripes. “You remembered what I told you about saying no, right Weston?”

“That worked at first, but it turns out running away works even better.”

Mrs. Berns cackled. “Or it would have, if I hadn’t lifted your car keys! It was just a little harmless fun, anyhow. You didn’t have to scream.”

Weston pulled on his collar like a practicing Rodney Dangerfield. “Of course not. I apologize. You caught me off guard when you put your hand in my pants.”

“Just looking for your laser beamer.”

Time for a change of subject. “What’d you bring for the potluck?” I asked brightly, indicating the pack of crackers stuffed into Mrs. Berns’ utility belt.

“Communion wafers. All Sarah Ruth’s talk of Jesus makes me hungry.”

I coughed on my own spit, and Weston just nodded weakly in agreement.

“Pastor Winter wouldn’t give me any wafers to go, even though I’ve been going to Nordland for seventy-five years, and it’s not easy to find these outside of a church,” Mrs. Berns continued, “but Larry’s has a new hippie section with all sorts of dried fruits and natural beans, like there’s any other kind. That’s where I got these glue-free Communion wafers.”

“You mean gluten-free?”

“Whatever. Want one?”

“I’ll pass. Thanks.” Weston looked like he was about to pass out, and I didn’t have many safe conversational options left. “Are you two enjoying the Festival?”

“I would be, if Party Pooper Man would start drinking.” Mrs. Berns nodded at his empty hands.

“I don’t drink.”

“That’s another thing we have in common,” I said. I kept to myself the fact that I had only been a non-drinker for three days. “We don’t like birds, and we don’t like drinking.”

“And we like to read, listen to jazz, and spend our evenings engaged in deep conversation?” Weston asked hopefully.

Mrs. Berns looked disgusted. “I think I hear someone calling my name.”

“Hunh?”

“Over there. Can’t you hear it?” She pointed toward the keg, and when both Weston and I looked that direction, she said, “Mrs. Berns! Mrs. Berns!” in a high, quiet voice. We turned back to her. “Gotta run! Thanks for the ride, Weston! If I need you, I’ll call real loud, so make sure your super hearing is tuned into my frequency.”

She strolled off, her cape hung between her legs like a flashy dog tail. Weston looked immensely relieved to see her go. “She has a lot of energy for a grandma.”

Point of fact, Mrs. Berns actually was a grandma. Curtis Poling at the Sunset said she had five kids and seven grandkids, and I have never met a one of them. “I warned you. Have you had a chance to eat yet?”

“I don’t have much appetite this evening. It must be this sun.”

Or fending off the advances of an octogenarian in a white velvet unitard, I thought to myself. “You must be hot. How many layers do you have on, anyhow?”

“The cape, a vest, and a shirt.” He rumbled in the back of his throat, like he had swallowed a bug. “I’m usually cold-blooded. Ever since I was a kid, I needed layers. Even growing up in the balmy South, I’d need fleece pajamas. You know the kind with feet?”

I smiled at the mental picture of a grown, gangly Weston in footie pajamas. “I do, but I can’t believe you’re not burning up. It’s pushing 100 degrees, and this is the coolest it’s been since noon. You sure you don’t want to take off the cape, at least?”

“I’m good, thank you.”

I shrugged. He didn’t look good. He looked hot. “Then you could try the corn maze. I bet if you stick to the sides, it’s cooler.”

Weston adjusted his John Lennon glasses with his pointer finger and shuffled uncomfortably. “I don’t really like crowds. I don’t suppose you’d like to take a walk in the woods with me? It looks like there’re paths. Who knows? We could find a new sub-species of wood tick!”

If words were wine, Weston Lippmann would be making Boone’s Farm. “I don’t know. I should probably stay out here, to cover the Festival for the newspaper, you know?”

“Oh, sure, I suppose,” he said, his weak flirting attempt phlooshing to the ground like a popped balloon.

I gave him a “it’s the best thing for both of us” smile and was about to make myself scarce when someone slapped me on the back. “Mira James, so pretty she gives you heart pains! How’s it going? I haven’t seen you in weeks.”

Christ on a cracker, if it weren’t for bad luck…was I emitting some sort of loser-pheromone? Had I been emitting it my whole life? I was a nice person. I held doors for old people and said my pleases and thank yous. I even considered myself fairly intelligent. Of course I loved to read, and I stayed on top of current events by perusing magazines at work. I was a little clumsy and for sure a dork, but what had I done to end up as a librarian and reporter in Battle Lake, Minnesota, mysterious-murder capital of the Midwest and home to one too many exes? I turned to glare at the body attached to the hand. “Hi, Brad.”

“You come to hear me sing? My new band is the pazizzle wadizzle! We do a techno-punk-grunge cover of ‘Proud to Be an American’ that’ll make you cry. People around here love it. Can’t get enough.”

“I can only imagine.”

“Say, who’s your friend?”

I looked reluctantly at Weston. I wanted to get away, not make introductions. “Weston, this is Brad. Brad, this is Weston. He’s in town for a couple weeks doing scientific research.”

“What’s up with the cape, dude? That’s so weird!”

This from a guy who wouldn’t eat bleu cheese the whole time we dated because he thought it would make him sad. “Don’t you have to do a sound check or something?”

“Totally! You want to come with me? It’ll be like old times.” He grinned, counting on his Jim Morrison–good looks to sway me.

“That’s a great offer, but Weston and I were just about to take a walk in the woods to search for wood ticks.”

Weston’s eyes lit up. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” I grabbed him by the elbow and led him away. This town was getting much too small. Ironically, that’s exactly what I was thinking as I bumped into Kennie with a fire burning in her eyes.

“You said you were going to come to my place yesterday morning.” She wore a flowing bohemian cotton top over a pair of stretch pants that were earning their name. One sneeze from her and we’d all be covered in spandex.

“I’m sorry, Kennie.” I didn’t even have the guts to lie, and that had a lot to do with the three coffins lined up behind her. They were simple pine boxes on four legs that stood around two feet off the ground. The tops were closed. I preferred to imagine them empty. “What’s with the boxes?”

She placed her hands protectively on the one nearest her. “These boxes are pure money, but it’s too late for you to get in on it, so don’t even ask.”

“Get in on what?”

“The entrepreneurial deal I’ve been trying to offer you a cut of all week.”

My guess that she was selling penis enlargers was clearly off base. “Coffins have already been invented.”

“These aren’t just coffins. They’re coffin tables.” She moved aside and showed me the sign she had been blocking, outlining it with a Vanna White flourish.

Coffin Tables By Kennie©

Beautiful centerpiece while you’re alive, eternal resting place when you’ve gone on to the Next Place. Custom made to your specifications. Buy the one piece of furniture that never goes out of style.

Behind me, Weston coughed uncomfortably. The poor man had now been in close range with Battle Lake’s two most extreme women in less than an hour. He was probably going to get the bends. “The wood grain is very nice,” he offered.

Kennie smiled proudly. “I had a local carpenter make up these demo models. See the legs? They fold up when it’s time for you to be buried. We’re even offering a glass-topped one so you can fill it with potpourri or dried flowers, or magazines while it’s in your living room. Then, at your final viewing, your loved ones can polish the glass so everyone can see you as they say their farewells.”

I shivered despite the heat. “Who would put a coffin in their living room?”

“Not a coffin. A coffin table.”

“Who would put a coffin table in their living room?”

At that moment, Chief Gary Wohnt materialized out of the crowd. He had on his impenetrable sunglasses and was in uniform. “Kennie.”

“Chief Wohnt,” she said icily, crossing her arms in front of her.

“Do you have a license to sell those?”

The energy between them was flinty. Gary used to be Kennie’s number one supporter, and to have him embarrass her like this was painful to witness.

“They’re not for sale.”

Gary removed his pot of Carmex, frosted his lips, and stuffed it back into his chest pocket. “You’re not selling these?”

“Not right now.”

“You’ll get a license when and if you do decide to sell.” This was a statement, not a question, and I wanted to kick him in the knee for how he was treating Kennie, like she was a stranger. I wasn’t ever going to be the president of Kennie’s fan club, but she had grown on me. A little.

Kennie covered the four feet between them, slow and dangerous. “I am the mayor of this town. I follow the rules. I recommend you do the same. Mira, watch the coffins for me, please. I have a date that I can’t miss.”

If her words affected Gary, he didn’t show it. She turned and stormed away angrily, slipping on her high madras heels, but not slowing her pace. I turned back to Gary. “You didn’t have to be such a hardass.”

He trained his black-mirrored gaze to me, twisted his lip, thought better of it, and stalked off in the opposite direction from Kennie.

“What was that all about?” Weston pushed his glasses up his nose and stared wonderingly from the retreating Kennie to the retreating Gary.

“I’m not exactly sure, but you still look pretty warm. We better get you in the shade.”

“What about the coffin tables? Don’t you need to watch them?”

“Nah. Kennie just needed to save face. Nobody’s going to take three pine coffins with legs, particularly if they have her name on them.”

Weston grinned happily. “To the shade, then. Onward, Christian soldiers!”

The phrase struck me as odd. “You’re a religious man?”

“Oh, no. It’s just a figure of speech.”

I remembered the caped figure I had seen going into the New Millennium Church the other day. I wasn’t sure if all my run-ins with organized religion had made me paranoid or if Weston was suddenly sending off a weird vibe, but the night was young, the air was festive, and the shade of the woods to the east of the corn maze entrance looked mighty nice. “Gotcha. Looks like there’s a main path here. I’m pretty sure it leads down to the lake.” As far as I knew, Hershod’s owned the land the Festival was on and about ten acres of the woods, but their property stopped at the small and expensive lakeshore lots. I thought I remembered a public access down there, though.

“We could dangle our feet in the water!”

“I thought you were cold-blooded.”

“Usually, but I’m beginning to feel a little overheated.” Weston cut his eyes at me, and I purposely ignored the look.

“I’d like to keep my eye on the crowds,” I said, as I strode into the jungle-thick woods. “I love to people watch. How about right over here? I think I see a rock we could…” My words trailed off as I saw a naked white butt rear up on the other side of the large fieldstone. It was just a flash, but it looked wide and hairy. Then it flashed up again. And again.

“For the love of Pete!” Weston drew up behind me and clapped his hands. “There is a festival going on out there, and there are children not fifty feet away. Whoever is behind that rock better stop what they are doing, or I’ll come over and break it up myself.”

I, for one, wanted to see what sort of man was attached to that hairy ass before I made any threats, but I admired Weston’s forcefulness and wondered what reserve he had pulled it from. Regardless, it worked. There was some shuffling behind the riding lawnmower-sized rock, followed by fierce whispering. Then, two meaty hands appeared, followed by a meaty head and a meaty body. It was Tom, of Tom and Tina’s Taxidermy, and I felt the heat rise on my face. The last thing I wanted to do was catch those two going at it.

“Sorry. Guess we got a little carried away in the night air. You know how young love is.”

Young love? I saw a flash of blonde hair followed by a woman crawling away. The shade of the oak forest made it hard to make out the face, but I knew the Amazon body, even without its neon clothes and expensive jewelry. “Annika?”

She whipped her head around before dashing off deeper into the woods, toward the lake, clothes in hand, but that was enough. Tom had been boinking the new girl, which explained the disappearing cash from 4Ts. Either Annika was taking money to buy herself expensive jewelry and Tom was turning a blind eye, or Tom was taking money to buy her expensive jewelry, and probably more. The affair would also explain why Annika was coming in when it wasn’t her shift. I suddenly felt greasy. I knew what it was like to be cheated on, thanks to Bad Brad, and it was an awful feeling. “What are you doing?”

Tom chuckled ruefully. “Making a jackass of myself, apparently.”

“That wasn’t Tina.”

“Really? It’s so hard to see in these woods.” His bad joke had a dark edge.

“Weston, I think we should get back to the festival.”

He grabbed my arm protectively. “I agree. After you.” Weston kept his eyes on Tom until I was nearly out of the woods, and then he followed. “You know, this town is an odd place.”

We broke out of the thick woods and were immediately back in the world of family and fun. “You don’t know the half of it.”

“You know that guy?”

“I know who he is. His wife is a friend of mine, but that wasn’t his wife.”

“I see.”

I sighed. “Me too. I see too much. And I don’t know what I’m going to tell her.”

“You want my advice?”

I looked at Weston’s face, tall enough to block the sun from my eyes. His untamed flop of hair was over his glasses, which were sliding down his nose. “You know what? I really do.”

“Don’t tell her anything. Nobody wants to hear that they’re being cheated on.”

“You wouldn’t want to know if your wife was sleeping around on you?”

His eyes darkened for a moment, and I wondered if I had hit a nerve. I glanced at his left-hand ring finger—no ring, just like I thought. His eyes cleared so fast I decided I had imagined it. “I bet that guy’s wife already knows. If she wants to talk to you about it, she will.”

I thought back to Tina’s convincing me to spy on her store. Had she suspected Tom was cheating and used me to find out? Nah. Tina didn’t have a duplicitous bone in her body. “You might be right. I’ll have to think about it. You want to walk through the maze with me?”

He glanced around at the crowd we were in, bottlenecking the entrance. “Sure. It looks like we might have to wait awhile, though.”

He was right. There were over a hundred people forming a circle between us and the entrance, the sun baking their heads and shoulders. Behind them, tall green corn stalks stood as still as sentinels. “That’s odd that everyone is standing in a circle. Usually, people here are pretty good about making lines. Should we go see what’s going on in the middle?”

“I don’t know. I don’t do so well in crowds, and I’m still feeling warm.”

I shaded my eyes to glance up at Weston. He did look a little green around the gills. “Why don’t you wait over there, by the edge of the woods, and I’ll pop in here real quick. After I see what’s going on, I’ll grab us both a couple cold sodas and we can wait it out in the shade until there’s fewer people. Deal?”

“Deal,” he said gratefully.

I watched him wobble off into the sparse shade and hoped he wouldn’t stumble across any more forest-lovin’ locals. The crowd around me was drinking beer and laughing pleasantly, but the farther into the circle I pushed, the less drinking and joy there was. Also, many people were holding their masks instead of wearing them, and their faces were tight. The nearer to the center I got, the easier it was to make out the shouting that was holding everyone’s attention. I elbowed my way to the very front and was dismayed to see Robert and Naomi Meale holding court.

Robert was dressed starkly in a black button-down shirt and slacks, his dark shoes as shiny as a mirror. His 1970s shop-teacher glasses magnified his entire face and made his eyes big and ominous. One of his fists was pumping in the air, and the other was holding a sign that said, “No False Religions! The Time to Repent Is Now.” He had one foot resting on his wife’s wheelchair, as if she were a piece of furniture.

She was staring fiercely up at him, her thin hair tied back, her face free of makeup. She was also dressed in a dark top and had a lap quilt peppered with an autumn leaf design covering her from the waist down. They were as overdressed for the heat as Weston. There was no sign of Alicia.

“Leave this heathen festival and return to the waiting arms of God! He will provide!” Robert Meale thrust his sign into the air as he spoke, swiveling his head to make eye contact with the guilty faces surrounding him. I didn’t look away when his face lit on me. “‘Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour,’ says Peter! And I say to you, the devil is about at this Festival. Is he going to devour you?”

A shiver slid down my spine, giving me vertigo in the crowd and heat. I was distracted from my queasiness by a glimpse of a mousy-haired woman three back in the crowd. She looked like the rapturous woman I had seen staring at Naomi at the Creation Science Fair, the one I was sure was Naomi’s sister and Les’ lover, but when I threaded my way through the crowd, she had vanished. I pushed my way back to the front of the gathering to observe Pastor and Mrs. Meale.

Naomi was still watching her husband intensely, an inner light burning behind her eyes like a fever. On her left hand she wore the gaudy ring I had noticed when we first met, and from this angle, it looked like a cross, or maybe a crucifix, set on a band. Was it the same design as the strange necklaces Alicia and Sarah Ruth wore? I was jostled by the crowd before I could get close enough to verify the design. I made my way farther around, so Mrs. Meale was directly in front of me, and her husband was behind her. Unfortunately, I was on her right side, and she had put both her hands under the quilt. She stared hungrily up at her husband.

“From the Galatians, we know we should ‘be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’” Pastor Meale pumped his fist with every syllable.

“It’s just a party!” a heckler yelled from behind me.

“And we got a drought!” someone seconded.

Pastor Meale yelled back, his neck veins popping. “‘He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap,’ Ecclesiastes, chapter 11, verse four!”

The feel of the crowd was dangerous. Those here for a good time, a reprieve from this dry summer and their long workdays, were growing agitated, but a fair number of people appeared shamed by the pastor’s words. I was wondering where Gary Wohnt was when I saw someone flip a lit cigarette from the crowd. It arced and landed on Naomi Meales’ lap, not five feet from me. I was the only one who appeared to notice it except for Pastor Meale, who flicked a glance at the thin wisp of smoke snaking up from her blanket, glared balefully at me, and then went back to yelling.

I waited for Mrs. Meale to spot the smoke, but like the rest of the crowd, she was transfixed by her husband. I was loath to put myself on center stage, but the cigarette had quickly burned a hole in the fleece lap quilt and was working on whatever layer she had underneath, whether that be skin or cloth. I jumped into the circle and ripped the quilt off her lap. The butt flew off with it, but I saw that the ember had already melted through her slacks, leaving a red mark on the skin of her undernourished thigh. “You’re burned!”

Naomi snatched the quilt from my hand and covered her legs up quickly. “I’m fine.” She looked back at her husband with fierce adoration.

“What?” Had she noticed that her leg had been on fire? “Your leg is burnt. You need to get some ice on it.”

“We’re fine.” Pastor Meale took his foot off the wheelchair and glared at me.

“I don’t think you are. Your wife’s leg is burnt. Someone accidentally threw a cigarette on it.”

The unintentional intermission the butt had caused woke the crowd from their reverie. They began to look around, at the masks in one hand and the beer in the other. A couple shook their heads (“If they were in charge of evolution, we’d still be monkeys,” I heard someone mutter), and all but a few hardcores turned back toward the maze and their friends and family.

“I said, we’re fine.”

“Shouldn’t you ask your wife if she’s fine?”

Naomi spoke without meeting my eyes. “For the wife does not rule over her own body, but the husband does,’ 1 Corinthians 7:4.”

“What’s going on here?” Gary Wohnt elbowed his way next to me.

Pastor Meale dropped his angry expression and offered his hand. “Gary! Welcome!”

Gary shook it, turned back to me, and repeated himself. “What’s going on here?”

“Well, these two were picketing the festival, and I came to see what was up when I saw someone flick a cigarette that landed on Mrs. Meales’ lap. I brushed it off her, but wanted to make sure she was okay.”

“She is,” Pastor Meale said firmly. “And now, I think we’ll be on our way. I believe we’ve conveyed our message. If we can turn away one person from this ungodly exercise, we will have done our duty. Good day to you both.” He pushed his wife’s wheelchair toward the main entrance.

“You go to their church,” I said accusingly. He didn’t respond. “And you’re at the Festival. Don’t you see a conflict?”

“I’m on the clock.” He strode off toward the entrance of the maze.

For my part, I stared longingly at the keg of beer across the commons. If Weston hadn’t been waiting for me, I might have put my mouth to the hose. I settled for two Diet Cokes and a handful of salami-cream-cheese-and-pickle tubes and made my way back to the woods. We munched and talked and traveled around groups of people as the sun set and the air became bearable. I didn’t much like small talk, but Weston was good at it, as long as it was only with a few people at a time, so I played shadow. The highlight was when I caught a glimpse of Alicia Meale, who must have expertly avoided any run-ins with her parents, dressed like a Fly Girl and holding hands with a flop-haired brute. I smiled to myself, a titillating hunch taking shape in the back of my head.

When I heard the sounds of Not with My Horse warming up on the north side of the festival, I asked Weston if he was ready to brave the maze with me before the sun was completely off the horizon.

“Do you mind going without me? You know that guy I was talking to about the correlation between rainfall and mosquito reproduction? I told him I’d wait here for him. He had to run and pick up his girlfriend, and then he was going to finish telling me about a wood tick he pulled off his dog last week. Said it didn’t look like any other tick he’d ever seen.”

I rolled my eyes. “Not a problem. I’ll probably head home after I get through the maze. See you around?”

“Deal.” Weston squeezed my arm and then turned back to wait for the inside track on a wood tick, his fingers quivering in anticipation like he was playing little pianos at his side.

I strode firmly past the keg, grabbed an apple out of a bowl, and entered the maze. Most people had already gone through, so I was alone in the entrance space with only the play between the setting sun and burgeoning full moon for company. The first fork appeared at twenty feet, and I chose left. I followed that winding path for ten minutes before I realized it was a dead end. I could hear distant chatter and the squealing riffs of Not with My Horse’s opening number when I returned to my initial starting spot, choosing right this time.

The clean, peppery smell of corn tassels tickled my nose as I marched over the hay lining the ground. I considered for a moment turning back. It was going on full dark, and if the rising moon went behind a cloud, I wouldn’t be able to see. Glancing at the clear sky, I decided to continue on. If nothing else, I could yell for help if I got lost. But would anyone hear me over the cranking of the band?

My fingers trailed over the smooth leaves and rough stalks of the six-foot-tall, thick-as-thieves corn, and on a whim, I tried to bend one. It was like a steel rod. I didn’t know what sort of genetically modified corn went into making a maze, but it was solid. I gave a yank to the stalk, and the ground didn’t move. I couldn’t even push it far enough apart to squeeze through and cheat. I guess the only way out of the maze was to follow the paths. As I walked, the sound of the band grew louder. The techno-punk-country-fusion was painful to listen to, but it served as a beacon for the exit.

I took what I hoped was my last right when I was brought up short by a scream, long and shrill like an animal being butchered. It sounded close, maybe twenty feet straight ahead, and it turned my blood to ice. I rushed forward but met a wall of corn, planted so close together it felt like a bamboo jungle. I had to take a run at it to break through the first three layers with my shoulder, but behind it were just more layers.

I darted back and around, and then around again, searching frantically for a way to reach the scream. When I heard another shriek, this one so full of terror it made my stomach turn, I realized I was getting farther away, not closer. I raced back, and then left, and forward, and right, and forward, and right again. I was just about ready to scream myself when I saw a wide opening ahead, a lighter black then the corn walls surrounding me. I charged forward and stumbled out of the maze. Straight ahead was the stage, but most people were turned toward a sobbing teenage girl crumpled on the ground not far from the exit I had just ran out of.

“They took Lydia! They just grabbed her and pulled her out of the maze!”

Lydia, the bubble-nosed brunette from Tom and Tina’s Taxidermy, Lucy’s friend and fellow cheerleader, was missing. According to her friend, Julie, two men dressed in black had jumped out of a corner on the forest side of the maze and dragged both teens to a hole whacked into one of the outside walls. Julie had escaped by biting the arm of her captor and running, but Lydia had not been so lucky.

As Julie sobbed inconsolably in the arms of a woman, a pall hung over the crowd, everyone thinking the same thing: Lydia was going to be shot in the back, just like Lucy Lebowski. Parents ushered their crying children away, and men and women exchanged worried glances before buzzing into action.

Someone called the state police, and a search party was forming out of the townspeople gathered around. I listened to all of this, feeling like one of those firecrackers that spins on the sidewalk, pointlessly shooting sparks. Instead of waiting for instruction, I took off around the east side of the corn maze until I spotted the hole. Gary Wohnt was already standing there with one of his deputies, and I cut into the hardwood forest on the maze’s perimeter before he spotted me.

I wished I had my flashlight and spider knife on me, but I would have to make do with the full moon and a big stick I kicked up. The woods were fairly cleaned out, which made walking easy, especially when I found the path Weston and I had been on earlier. I walked the path back toward the maze until I was about fifty feet south of the cut-out exit. I stepped in something sticky and looked down. Someone had spilled a large amount of liquid where the trees met the field, and they had done it after Weston and I passed over this spot. Two evenly spaced tracks ran through mud, each about two inches wide and half an inch deep. I stuck my fingers into the ooze and smelled it—water and dirt.

I backtracked on the path into the woods, searching for more clues. Trees loomed over me, casting long-limbed shadows. I felt like I was in another maze, only larger, and my senses were heightened by a blend of fear and anger. How dare someone terrorize the festival! Would another mother have to learn that her daughter was murdered, that nowhere was safe?

I had an idea that I’d keep going until I came out at the lakefront property in the hopes of finding some evidence of Lydia having been taken this way, but the deeper I walked, the less able I was to see amid the trees. I was about to turn around when a shaft of moonlight through the trees outlined a figure, maybe six feet tall, his arms out. He was headless. I froze, my heart knocking around in my chest. Was it Lydia, shot through the back and hung in the trees? Was it one of the kidnappers? I was too afraid to tear my eyes away. I opened my mouth to yell, but nothing came out. In the distance, I could hear the rumble of people shouting Lydia’s name, searching, agitated, but they were all too far away to help me.

I stayed, frozen to my spot, and a breeze rippled through the treetops. The form did not move. A larger gust blew, raising the arms of the figure. When the wind died, so did the arms. I stepped cautiously toward it and reached up. It was a dark, empty coat, caught in a branch. I pulled it down and felt inside. The pockets were empty and the interior was smooth except for a rip in the left shoulder. I forced my breathing to slow and relaxed ever so slightly. I scanned the immediate area and found nothing else.

I made my way back out the woods and straight to Gary Wohnt, who was still standing at the hole the girls had been dragged out of. He was taking notes and barking orders. When he took a breath, I said, “There’s something I want you to see.”

He raised his eyebrows but followed me without complaint, motioning to one of his deputies to finish assigning tasks. When we reached the tracks in the mud, I pointed.

“What?” He asked.

“Those tracks. See them? They’re the same tracks I found outside the Fortune Café after it was vandalized.” I had a theory forming in my head. The vandalism at the Fortune, Lucy Lebowski’s murder, and Lydia’s kidnapping were all connected, and I was working on an idea of who was behind it.

“Wagon tracks. They brought the kegs through here to avoid the crowds.”

“And the tracks at the Fortune?”

“Was the ground wet there, too?”

“No,” I said reluctantly. “It wasn’t. They were just faint tracks in the dry grass. But they were the exact same tracks that are right here. What made them?”

“I don’t know. Another wagon? Why didn’t you point them out to me when I was there?”

“It didn’t seem important then. It does now.”

“I don’t see how.” Gary abruptly turned on his heel and walked away.

We weren’t friends, but he had never been this dismissive of me. What was going on? I looked at the coat I had found in the woods, now draped over my shoulder. It was either navy blue or black. I looked at Gary’s retreating back, remembered him shaking hands with Pastor Meale as the pastor picketed the festival. I wasn’t sure any longer which team Gary was playing for. I would keep the coat to myself for now. I made my way back to my car. After a quick stop at home to grab my knife and flashlight, I was going to head directly to New Millennium Bible Camp.

___

The traffic was light. Almost everyone had stayed at Hershod’s, knowing they wouldn’t find Lydia there but unwilling to go home without trying to help. When I drove back past the corn maze, hundreds of flashlights bobbed in the night like fireflies, or the torches of villagers hunting a monster.

My radio wasn’t on. I needed to think, and the clean night air and buzzing bullfrogs were enough background sound. I knew in my gut that Robert, Alicia, and Naomi Meale were responsible for the vandalism, one dead girl, and one missing girl. The tracks I had seen outside the Fortune Café had been made by Naomi’s wheelchair, and they were the same tracks I had just seen at the corn maze. Lucy Lebowski’s body had been dumped in Clitherall, not far from the Bible Camp, and if it had been wet enough, I’m sure there would have been wheelchair tracks there, as well.

The two men in black Julie said had pulled her and Lydia out of the maze had actually been Robert and Alicia, I was sure of it. Naomi probably waited in the background while they did their dirty work, and then they piled the body on her and wheeled it away. I didn’t know why they had done it or how they had known the dead girls, but guessed it was related to the God’s Army they were forming. I needed proof, though. That’s what I was hoping to find at the Bible camp.

I turned on the gravel road leading to the New Millennium and continued on past the camp entrance, parking my car next to the Spitzer Lake public landing. I hoofed it back, my senses on alert for any sign of Lydia. The camp was dark. None of the six cabins had lights on inside, and the assembly hall was as black as a haunted house. The only spark I could see was a dim glow off the back of the Meales’ house. I scurried to the nearest cabin, my heart pounding in my ears, and crouched down. From here, I had a clear view of the central yard, a vast, moonlit sea separating me from the Meale house and the main hall. I was about to leave my safe spot and dart toward the house when I spotted someone lurking around the assembly hall.

I pressed myself to the cabin wall, a shrub partially obscuring me from view. The person was not much taller than me, and slightly stooped. He or she appeared to be heading toward the Meale house. I concentrated on making my heart stop hammering until the lurker was out of sight, and then I dashed across the open space separating the cabin from the assembly hall before my common sense had time to haul on its work clothes.

I crouched for a moment, catching my breath, and then slipped soundlessly around the moon-shaded side of the great hall and tiptoed toward the Meales’ house. At the end of the building, I peered around the corner and peed my pants a little when the shadow walked not twenty feet in front of me, looking over his shoulder back toward the house.

When he turned his face toward the moon, I saw it was Pastor Winter, sneaking around the Bible Camp. What could he possibly be looking for? Cribbing a sermon for tomorrow’s service? Searching for a kidnapped girl, like me? Or maybe hiding an abducted teen’s body, or planting evidence of a kidnapping? He scurried across the open grounds to one of the sheltering cabins, and then was out of sight. When I heard the distant rumble of a car starting, I prayed it was Pastor Winter heading out, and I gathered my resolve to take my turn spying on the dimly lit Meale house.

I walked lightly and low to the ground, avoiding the gravel so as not to make noise. My calves ached at the effort, and every sound, from the song of the bullfrogs in the slough to the snap of a branch in the woods, made my hackles quiver. When I was within twenty feet of the Meales’ house, I dropped into a crawl, my knife in hand. This close to the grass I could smell dryness and dirt, and the unwatered sod crackled under my hands and knees.

A light spilled out the back of the house, and I followed it around to Pastor and Mrs. Meales’ bedroom. Crouching under the lit window, I took a deep breath and slid up the side of house, facing in. Not for the first time in my life, I wished my forehead was smaller. If they were looking out, they’d have a full view of two inches of noggin before I could see them.

Fully erect, I was just able to peer over the sill. Pastor Meale was in bed, holding a Bible, a glass-shaded lamp casting a circle of yellow light around him. Next to him was a prostate form completely covered in a quilt. I assumed the body was Naomi, probably in bed early at her husband’s command. I continued around to Alicia’s window. Her room was dark, so I had to peer in for several minutes before my eyes adjusted. It looked like the bedroom was empty, so I took a risk and shone my flashlight around. The door was closed and the room was person-free. That was significant, but how, I didn’t know. Was Alicia somewhere, in charge of guarding Lydia? If so, where?

I crouched down onto my haunches, contemplating my next move. I considered searching the other buildings, but they were all open to the public and would be busy bright and early tomorrow, on a Sunday. I couldn’t imagine that the Meales would be foolish enough to hide a girl where she’d be certain to be discovered. There was only one logical place besides the Bible camp where the Meales could hide a body, and it was only a couple miles away: Naomi’s sister’s house on Hancock Lake. I shoved my knife into my waistband and jogged back to my car.

I was at the Toyota door in less than seven minutes. I was fairly certain no one had followed me, but I drove with only the light of the moon until I was back on the blacktop. I knew there was a minimum maintenance road that would take me directly to Hancock Lake, and after several missed attempts, I found it and bumped along. When I came out on the windy road adjacent to Sissy’s house, I sped up and turned right to reach Hancock Lake. I parked my car at the same spot near the lake where I had left it on my original visit and walked up to Golden Pond Road, knife once again in hand. I knew Les Pastner patrolled these woods, and it was better to be prepared.

I followed the perimeter of the woods, the lonely sound of an owl hooting overhead. I shivered. Night birds were worse luck than day birds. I was sure of it. When I reached Sissy’s driveway, the front kitchen window was ablaze in light. A figure inside zipped past the window, too quick for me to be certain who it was. I made my way closer, on guard for some more half-assed rope traps. My ankle burn from the first one was just starting to heal.

I stepped closer to the house. There was also a light on in the basement, coming out of those little half-windows high on basement walls. The yellow glow shone through the snowball bushes in front of the windows strangely, flickering and golden, and I wanted to get closer to peer in.

I was forced to cross an expanse of naked driveway to reach the house, though, and the moon barreled down like a headlight. I steeled myself and strode steadily to the house. I was fifteen feet from the basement window, the light strobing out, when the front screen door of the house crashed open.

“Who’s out there?”

An icy claw grabbed my heart and my feet. If I ran forward or sideways, I could hide in the woods. If I ran back, I could stay on the road and get to my car the quickest. My mind was agile, but my feet were leaden.

The ratchet of a shotgun being cocked came on the heels of the woman’s harsh voice. “Who are you?”

Her command broke through my fear, and I turned and beat cheeks. I ducked in the woods first, remembering a conversation I overheard between some hunters at the Turtle Stew. They said that if you zig-zagged from someone who was shooting at you instead of running straight, the shooter would only have a one in ten chance of actually hitting you. Even then, they would likely miss a vital organ. So I darted around trees, in and out of ditches, until my car was in sight. Then, I ran straight as an arrow, fumbling for my keys, so I had the car gunning before I was all the way sat down.

I waited until I was a mile away to lock all my doors. As a resident of Battle Lake, I had been threatened by worse than a woman with a gun, but the creepiness of the Meales combined with Lydia’s kidnapping made the whole night menacing, from the trees to the moon’s liquid reflection on the lake to the raccoon scuttling across the road. I kicked myself for still not getting a good look at Sissy when she menaced me with the gun, but there was no help for it now. I’d need to come up with a way to slip inside that house in the daylight. Tomorrow.

Sunday morning was as hot as the devil’s armpit, and it seemed draped in a cottony funk. Heavy clouds locked elbows in the sky, but even without a visible sun, the oppressive heat wasn’t letting up. The temperature and uneasy weather riled the already-stressed folks of Battle Lake. Lydia was missing, and if she wasn’t yet dead, she soon would be. The town was buzzing with people whispering their worst fears, locking their doors, not letting their children walk next door to play. A mandatory curfew had been enacted, and word was the FBI was in town, which made the seriousness of the crime inescapable and visceral.

For my part, I was out of Battle Lake in a week, and I didn’t know if that would be enough time to find Lydia, or to pin Lucy’s murder and the vandalism at the Fortune Café on the Meales. I needed a way to weasel into the Meales’ inner circle, and also to steal into Sissy’s house. The opportunity to accomplish my first goal presented itself nicely at the Café over breakfast.

“Hey, Sid, what’s this?” I held up the flier I had just ripped off their community bulletin board.

Sid looked up from the triple iced mocha with cinnamon she had been brewing. “I don’t know. That young Elizabeth-Taylor-look-alike from the Bible Camp stuck it up this morning.”

“Alicia?”

“If you say so.”

The flier said “Save Your Soul” across the top in gothic lettering. It was an invitation to the public to visit New Millennium Bible camp to “Cleanse Your Soul of Pagan Residue and Get Right with God or Pay the Price in Eternal Damnation.”

The front door opened, and I heard soft-tennie footsteps stop behind me, followed by an old lady voice. “You thinkin’ of joining? Remember that Jesus wants spiritual fruits, not religious nuts.”

“Mrs. Berns? What’re you doing here?”

“I was on my way to church. Right outside the door, in fact. That’s when I realized I didn’t wanna go in. I think it’s all the glue-free communion wafers I ate yesterday. They didn’t sit quite right. I coulda pooped through a sieve last night.”

“Maybe that’s why they only distribute one wafer a week.”

“Maybe. How’d your date with Weston go?” She nodded over my shoulder, and I could see Weston leaning toward a computer screen in the next room. I hadn’t noticed him when I first walked in, being too distracted by the flier.

“It wasn’t a date. He’s not my type.”

“Too nice, huh?”

I rolled my eyes. “He’s a very nice man. I’m just not dating right now.”

“Too bad. I bet your kids would be able to fly. Hey, Weston! You see Mira over here? Maybe you should come say good morning.”

Weston’s head popped around, and he quickly shut down his computer. When he stood, he had a strange expression on his face; it reminded me of the look Tom the taxidermist had had last night when we had caught him stuffing a different kind of animal—guilty and defiant all at once. I realized there was a lot I didn’t know about him. “Good morning, Mira. Mrs. Berns. How are you two?”

I took his offered hand and shook it, though the gesture seemed oddly formal. “Fine. I didn’t see you after we separated last night. Did you hear that a local girl’s been kidnapped?”

His eyes cleared and turned serious. “I did. I joined the search party.”

“They find anything?”

“Nothing. The FBI has been called in. At least that’s what I heard one of the local police say.”

“I wonder if they need any help?” Mrs. Berns asked. “I always enjoy a special investigation.”

I raised my eyebrows, envisioning Mrs. Berns with a badge, a gun, and a license to kill. “Good luck with that. I’ve gotta get going.”

“Where’re you off to?” Weston asked.

I held up the flyer. “To get saved.”

“I didn’t think you were the religious type.”

I studied him defensively. “Why not?”

“Because you’re a librarian, and you swear, and you’re so curious.”

“Nice save. I’m actually going because I have a hunch that the pastor and his family out at the Bible camp have something to do with the recent bad luck in Battle Lake, and I want to check it out more.” I wasn’t sure what drove me to reveal my conspiracy theory. I usually played my cards much closer to my chest, but Weston was giving off a weird vibe, and I wanted to call him out.

Weston looked at me sharply. “What makes you think that?”

I became protective of my clues, the few that I had. “Just a hunch. Anyways, I’m off.”

“Bring me with.”

“I don’t know, Weston. I work best alone.”

“If you two are going, I’m going too. I just gotta take a dump first.”

I glared at Mrs. Berns.

“What? Pretty girls poop, too. I’ll be right back.”

I studied her. She was dressed normal today—no superhero suit, no toy sharpshooters. “Fine, I’ll get a scone and some tea and meet you two out front. If you’re coming along, though, you can’t blow my cover. We’re all going to get saved, no questions asked.”

Mrs. Berns saluted and turned smartly toward the bathroom. Weston grinned and shrugged. For my part, I went to the front counter to order my breakfast. Sid gave me the “who’s that guy?” question with her eyes, nodding toward Weston, and I gave her back the “I’ll tell you later” look. Breakfast in hand, I headed out, Mrs. Berns and Weston on my heels. I ignored their chatter on my way to the Bible camp, the route becoming so familiar I could cruise it in my sleep.

I knew it was a bad idea to bring these two, and when we reached the Bible camp driveway, I warned them again that we were undercover.

“What’s our code name?”

“We don’t have code names, Mrs. Berns. We’re ourselves, pretending to be here to get saved.”

“Okey dokey, artichokey. But if you’re in trouble, I’m the Green Lantern, he’s Aquaman, and you can be Snow White.”

“I’m not going to be Snow White.”

“Fine. You can be Dyna Girl.”

“No, we’re just us. Weston Lippmann, Mrs. Berns, and Mira James. We’re here for salvation. If you can’t stick to that, you need to stay in the car.” Mrs. Berns looked hurt, and I immediately regretted my harshness. “Fine,” I grumbled. “I’m Dyna Girl, you’re Green Lantern, and Weston is Aquaman. But only if we’re in trouble. Okay?”

Mrs. Berns looked redeemed. “Ten four, good buddy.”

The parking lot was packed, as usual. People were streaming in and out of the cabins and the assembly hall, and a crowd was gathering around the pulpit in the water, to the east of the cabins. All the benches in the horseshoe around the pulpit were taken, and the congregation was seven deep. In the center was Pastor Meale, up to his ankles in slimy water. As the three of us marched toward the outdoor gathering, I looked everywhere for Alicia and Naomi. They were nowhere to be seen.

For the first time, I wondered about the soundness of this idea. I had been so excited to have an in at the Bible camp that I hadn’t considered what getting saved might involve, and how I was going to come off as a sincere, repentant sinner. If Mrs. Berns and Weston hadn’t been with me, I would have turned around. Two missing teens in a week, one dead. Those weren’t the kinds of odds a normal person would stick their nose in.

“Get a move on!” Mrs. Berns prodded me. “You’re the leader. Show us the way to the Lord.” She cackled as she followed behind.

I led reluctantly to the pulpit-in-the-water and hung out on the border of the crowd. I had just about decided this was a waste of time when an opening parted in the crowd. “You are here to be saved?”

There was no mistaking that Pastor Meale was pointing at me. It was now or never. “I am.”

“Then come to the front and give yourself to Jesus.”

I walked shakily through the crowd, and noticed that both Gary Wohnt and Sarah Ruth were at the front of the crowd, facing the pastor. Gary Wohnt, sunglasses-free, peered at me impassively. Sarah Ruth looked apprehensive. I flashed them both a weak grin, and cringed as the lukewarm water rushed over my leather sandals. The lake bottom was squishy underneath, and my feet made sucking noises when I pulled them up. The hot air smelled like peat moss.

When I was standing directly in front of the Pastor, I looked into his eyes, and strangely, my fear melted away. I knew he was taking responsibility for whatever happened next, and it felt good to share the load. Besides, what could happen in front of a crowd of people? He took me by the wrist and led me until we were at an open spot away from the pulpit, up to our waists in water. He placed one hand on my forehead and the other at the small of my back and pushed me toward the water. My back arched, and the bathwater-warm lake caught me. It was happening so quickly that I only had time to be thankful I had worn a bra.

Pastor Meale pulled me back up, his eyes closed, whispering fervently. “May God take her safely to his Kingdom.”

I looked around, relieved. That hadn’t been so bad. I turned to give Weston and Mrs. Berns the thumbs up when Pastor Meale took his hand off my forehead, grabbed my upper arm firmly, and ground his shoe-clad foot into my ankle. It was the same one that was still raw from the Les Pastner-trap-induced rope burn. I whimpered and went down, twisting to escape. I felt his hand on the back of my neck as I dove underwater, the fleshy bottom of the lake allowing me to spin out from under him. I didn’t surface until I had stroked several feet away, sure I was going to feel the full body of the pastor pin me underwater.

When I came up, I wiped my eyes quickly, ready to dive down again if need be. Pastor Meale was where I had left him and Gary Wohnt was coming toward him, knee-deep in water. Everyone else was humming rapturously and swaying with their eyes closed, with the lone exception of Mrs. Berns, who had hawk eyes trained on the pastor and the police chief.

I tried to put pressure on the foot Pastor Meale had crushed and squealed at the icy-hot pain that shot up my leg. My ankle was severely sprained, or broken. I swam toward shore as far as I could and hopped the rest of the way to Mrs. Berns, dripping filthy water. No one offered me a hand.

Mrs. Berns offered me a surprisingly strong shoulder to lean on. “Are you all right, Dyna Girl?”

“No,” I said, trying not to cry. “I think my ankle is broken.”

“The pastor dirty-dogged you, didn’t he?”

“He stepped on my foot.” I brushed dripping hair out of my face. “I suppose it could have been an accident.”

“I suppose walleyes can fly, too. Let’s get you to a doctor.”

“Where’s Weston?”

“He disappeared about the same time you got all moony-eyed and went into the lake. He can find his own way home.”

“I don’t want to leave him here.”

“Have you seen your ankle?”

I purposely had not. It felt hot and pulsed like a migraine. When I let my eyes wander down my mud-streaked leg, I was rewarded with the sight of my left ankle as wide as a rabbit in a snake’s throat, the skin purple and stretched. “Yeah, Weston can probably find his way home. Can you drive?”

“Is the Pope Catholic?”

“I’m pretty sure he is, but can you drive?” Don’t ever deflect a deflector.

“Not in the eyes of the law, but that doesn’t stop me from getting where I’m going.”

“Good enough.” We hobbled back to the car. I mostly limped, using Mrs. Berns for balance, and my ankle throbbed with every jolt. I periodically looked back at the congregation, but they took no notice of us. The air was hot but I was wet and in shock, and I shivered as we made our way.

Once we reached the car, it took Mrs. Berns a couple tries and painful grinds to figure out my stick shift, but soon we were headed to the Douglas County Hospital in Alexandria. When we arrived, I had Mrs. Berns bring out a wheelchair so I didn’t have to walk in. She wheeled me in with a flourish, and we spent the next several hours waiting next to sunstroked tourists, a guy with a fishhook stuck in his lip, and other assorted emergencies.

By the time we got to a doctor, I had lost most of the feeling in my ankle. My overriding sensation was of being covered in sticky, dried swamp water. An evil poking session and several x-rays later, my ankle was declared sprained, but intact. A kind nurse cleaned it off, wrapped an Ace bandage around tight as a tourniquet, and gave me an ice pack for the ride home. She offered crutches, but I didn’t take them. I wasn’t planning on being out of commission long enough to learn how to use them. In fact, thanks to a Paul Bunyan–sized dose of Percocet, I had decided I was going to drive us home. One trip on windy back roads with Mrs. Berns at the wheel had been enough for me.

“Hey, Green Lantern, you mind if I drive?”

“Suit yourself, but the doctor said you shouldn’t operate heavy machinery on the happy pills and to stay off that ankle.”

“It’s my left foot. I hardly need it. Can you help me find a sweatshirt, though? I think there’s one in the trunk, and I’m feeling chilly.”

Mrs. Berns looked at me doubtfully. “It’s 97 degrees. You sure you’re okay to drive?”

I shivered. “Positive. I just want a sweatshirt.”

“Okay.” She took my keys and went around to the back. “Will this do?” She held up the black coat I had found in the woods at the Festival last night.

“No. That’s not mine.”

She looked at the inside. “Hell of a rip here on the left shoulder. My aunt used to have rips in all her coats just like this. She was a gypsy, and all her big, sharp rings tore the shoulders of every coat she had when she put them on. Boy, could that woman belly dance, though.”

The sudden thought was almost too big to fit inside my head. Naomi Meale wore a big, sharp ring on her left hand. Could it have torn the inside shoulder of this coat? Had I found Naomi Meales’ coat at the corn maze, stuck in the trees as if she could walk out of it. Mrs. Meale could walk. But then how come she hadn’t pushed the burning cigarette off her leg? Was she that crazy? Or was I the crazy one for even thinking she could use her legs?

I thought back to Naomi talking in tongues, and her reverent adoration of her husband. No, the more I thought about it, the more it made a sick sense. Naomi Meale could walk, she and Robert Meale had some twisted reason for kidnapping and killing teenage girls, first in Georgia and now in Minnesota, and Mrs. Meales’ sister was their partner in crime. No one would believe me if I told them my crazy hunch, least of all Gary Wohnt, who was under the Meale spell.

No, it was up to me. I would take my flashlight, my knife, and a digital camera and find Lydia tonight, if she was still alive. Nothing would turn me away. Nothing.

It was almost seven p.m. when I finally dropped Mrs. Berns off at the Senior Sunset. She didn’t want to let me go home alone. She said it was because she was worried about my ankle, but I think she sniffed a showdown in the air and didn’t want to miss it. Part of me wanted to bring her along—she had been a good little bodyguard to me in July—but I didn’t know what I was walking into and couldn’t in good conscience let her tag along.

At my house, I played fetch with Luna so she could exercise without me needing to move, and then I hobbled around, filling both pets’ food and water dishes. I also fed and watered myself, though I was too jittery from anticipation to swallow much more than some fruit and juice.

I showered and re-wrapped my ankle, only this time I made it so tight it felt like a club. I couldn’t have bent it to save my soul. I hadn’t had time to wash my summer spying outfit since my last mission, but it didn’t smell too bad, and the linen pants slipped on easily over my mummified ankle. I added my stun gun to the knife and flashlight in my waistband. I had bought Z-Force, as I had fondly named the weapon, in June, and even had a couple good opportunities to see it in action. The little gizmo looked like a black hair trimmer but stung like a scorpion, if said scorpion could deliver several thousand volts of electricity off one charge. Z-Force was a passive-aggressive, commitment-avoidant weapon—you zap and run, and no one is hurt for very long—and it fit my lifestyle like a glove.

I wasn’t stupid. If my instincts were correct, two of the Meales were kidnappers and at least one was a murderer. They were dangerous, and the odds weren’t on my side in a direct confrontation. However, the odds of convincing God-struck Gary Wohnt that they were culpable were even poorer. All I needed was one shred of concrete proof that the Meales were guilty—Lucy Lebowski’s pompoms squirreled away in the assembly hall kitchen, or Lydia locked in the church basement, or a recording of Pastor Meale confessing to God that he murdered the Lebowski girl as a way to redirect his inappropriate feelings about his daughter.

If I didn’t find that evidence at the Bible camp, I would uncover it at the Hancock Lake house, even if it took me all night. I could find that proof and slip away without being seen and let Gary take it from there. If I didn’t come up with that proof, though, Lydia was a dead girl, guaranteed.

If she was even still alive. I pushed the thought away. Lydia had to be alive, though what the poor girl was suffering now was impossible to imagine. Better action than fear. I was the only person who suspected the Meales, and I took that responsibility seriously.

Before I went to the Bible camp, however, I had a hunch that needed following up. A short drive brought me to the curiously-named Makeout Point, odd because there was no point, just a lot of making out in a field next to an abandoned farmhouse. All the local teens parked and partied here, even though the Battle Lake police regularly busted them up. Whoever owned the land had finally caved in to reality last summer and had placed a port-a-potty next to one of the decaying sheds.

I counted four cars and a minivan as I pulled in. Knocking on the windows of the first two brought embarrassment for all involved—it’s hard to tell one brunette from another when she’s got a blonde farm boy attached to her face—but the minivan contained the pot o’gold.

“Alicia?” I knocked on one of the backseat windows, impressed with the amount of heavy breathing it must have taken to fog up every window in a seven-passenger Dodge Caravan. My initial knocks didn’t break the pace of the writhing mass I could make out through the misty window, so I rapped with the nice end of Z-Force. “Police!”

What fun. Wild shuffling took place inside the minivan. Minutes later, the sliding door rumbled open, and I was face to face with a flushed young man with saucer eyes and an underbite. “You saw a cop car?”

“What? No, I said, ‘Puh-leez.’ Who makes out in a Dodge Caravan?”

He ducked his wide round eyes sheepishly. “It’s my parents’.”

“Figured. I’m looking for Alicia Meale. Preacher’s daughter?”

A batch of tangled brunette hair peeped over his shoulder, followed by two angry eyes. “Whaddya want with me?”

Bingo. Anyone who’s grown up in a small town knows that nobody parties like the pastors’ kids. I liked Alicia about as much as a cold sore, but I had had a feeling she was too whiny to be a murderer and too manipulative to follow her parents’ lead, except when it benefited her. I had started work on this theory when I found the bag of weed in her drawer. When I spotted her holding hands at the August Moon Festival with Knute Anderson, last year’s star senior quarterback and local manwhore, I knew exactly what type of person I was dealing with. No way would she give up a Saturday night to kidnap a teenager. A little early morning vandalism as revenge for some imagined slight, maybe. A crime that involved getting dirty and didn’t have boys around? Never. Now to follow up on the second part of my hunch. “I need to talk to you.”

“Don’t care.”

“You will care. Either you answer a couple questions, or I tell your parents you were making hot monkey friction on the Sabbath.”

“They’d never believe you over me. They think I’m an angel straight from God’s hands.”

Probably true. I had another ace in the hole, though. “I know someone else who would think you’re a heavenly angel.”

She snorted. “Who?”

“You know the band that played at the Festival last night? Not with My Horse?”

“Do I know them? Gawd, do I wish! They were smokin’!” Alicia said this with no consideration for the hurt-looking minivan-driver whose pants she had most recently visited. He was, incidentally, not the star quarterback she had been holding hands with last night. Someone really should do a study on the direct correlation between proximity with God in your childhood and affinity with beer, bongs, and boys in the teen years.

“The lead singer is a good friend of mine.”

“The one that looks like a blond Jim Morrison?”

And screws like a blond Andy Rooney. But she didn’t need to know that. “Yeah. His name is Brad. How about we do a trade? You answer a couple questions for me, and I set you up with Brad.”

“How do I know you’ll follow through?”

“You don’t, but what have you got to lose?”

She pushed her hair back, looked like she was about to close the door on my face, and then realized she had just been making out in a minivan. What did she have to lose? “Fine. Make it quick.”

“You know Lucy Lebowski and Lydia Henderson?”

“I know who they are.”

“Their parents go to your church?”

She weighed the question and must have decided it was information I could find out elsewhere if I wanted to. “Yeah. At least a couple times.”

“Did Lucy and Lydia go to church with their parents?”

“Hell, no!” This was the minivan driver, apparently pulled out of his lust-stupor. “You couldn’t get Lucy within a mile of a church. She said she’d go up in smoke!” He laughed at the memory. “Lydia wasn’t as much of a partier, but she stopped going to church her junior year. Stopped eating meat, stopped curling her hair, the whole deal. It was really weird. We thought maybe she was joining a cult.”

Ah, yes, the cult of free thinking. Scary stuff. But between Alicia and her boy toy, my questions had been answered and my theory confirmed. “Thank you both. You’ve been a big help.”

“You’re not going to introduce me to Brad, are you?” Alicia pouted.

“Oh, I most certainly am. You two will make a perfect pair. I’ll be in touch.” I’m not sure if they were able to get back in the mood after I left, but I didn’t much care. I was on to bigger and scarier things.

As I pulled out of the Makeout Point road, the full moon stared down at me, as round and myopic as a saucer of milk. There was an ominous, electric feeling in the air. It reminded me of the day in fifth-grade science class when our teacher, Mr. Bowden, brought in a Van de Graaff generator. The static electricity generator looked like an aluminum ball on a pedestal. I’m not sure what Mr. Bowden’s teaching goal was, but what I took away from the experience was that you didn’t want to be the last person in a Van de Graaff chain. You’d receive a shock that would singe your toenails. Even if you didn’t touch the silver ball, your arm hair crackled up whenever you stood within five feet of it and your blood felt a little bit lighter than normal. That’s how I felt now as I stared down empty County Road 5, heading south. Heat lightning flashed across a field to my left and I shivered, the night air smelling as lonely as a wolf’s howl.

As I drove, I weighed my situation. I knew I couldn’t bring anyone with me tonight because it was too dangerous, but if something happened to me, my theory could disappear forever, and teens would continue to disappear from Battle Lake. Settling for a compromise, I backtracked to Clitherall and wrote my theory on a sheet of scrap paper that I folded like an envelope. I grabbed a stamp from the sheet I kept in my checkbook and stuck it on the outside but was at a momentary loss for whom to send it to. Suddenly the name and address came like a flash, and I added an extra two lines at the end of the note.

There was one blue metal mailbox outside the Clitherall Post Office, and I heaved open the top and dropped my letter in. It would go out with tomorrow’s mail, come hell or high water.

Back in my car, the light-blooded feeling was still with me, but I didn’t feel quite as lonely. Too nervous to listen to the radio, I hummed and played “Would You Rather” with myself. It was a childish game that Mrs. Berns loved, and it involved giving a person two horrible choices, like “Would you rather wake up next to Donald Trump or Michael Jackson?” I was just mulling over the merits of working the fryer at McDonald’s versus personning the complaints desk at Wal-Mart when I took a right onto the dirt road leading to New Millennium Bible Camp.

When I heard my tires chew the gravel and realized I was actually doing this, my blood drifted even farther north. I deliberately kept up my inane mind chatter. I couldn’t afford to talk myself out of this, as perilous as it felt. I was imbued if not with confidence at least with faith in the rightness of my actions.

I believe I would have made it all the way to the Bible Camp if not for the bloodied woman dragging herself across the dusty road in front of me.

The glimpse I caught was of a female figure in bloody rags, army crawling, pulling heavy legs behind her. Then, it was a hurricane of fear too big for my body, screams that were mine or hers, and pure, ice-cold adrenaline as I pumped my brakes. Because she was so low to the road, my headlights hadn’t caught sight of her until I was almost on top of her. I pulled back on my steering wheel as if I could stop the car by sheer force of will, and I squeezed shut my ears and hoped like I had never hoped before that I wasn’t about to hear my car thump over her.

Silence. Drifting dust sprinkling through the beam of my headlights like snow. A full, bright moon. The sweaty, sour smell of fear. But no thump. I realized my car had killed itself, either out of terror or my inability to remove my bandaged left foot from the clutch before I buried the brake. Shakily, I reached for the door handle and let myself out. My legs quivered as I limped around to the front of the car.

“Hurry.” The voice was raspy and sad, not at all commanding. But she was alive.

“Lydia?” She had her face and body to the road, her hands stretched out in front of her as if in supplication. Her dark hair was long and matted, part of it underneath the passenger-side tire of my Toyota, itself just inches from her head. The scene was surreal, a tableau of horror coming and going.

I hobbled over and kneeled next to her. “Lydia? Can you talk to me? I’m going to turn you over, okay?”

When she didn’t answer, I slipped out my knife to gently cut the hair under my tire and turned her away from my car. I was irrationally worried that the Toyota was going to roll forward that handbreadth and pop her skull like a summer squash. Her head lolled as I turned her on her back, and I had to bite my lip to keep from yelling. Her face was black with dried blood and swollen beyond recognition. I grabbed her left hand to feel for a pulse when I saw the gigantic rings.

Click. Click. Click. “Mrs. Meale?” I drew back, scared all over again. “Mrs. Meale? Is that you?”

Her lids fluttered open. She didn’t move anything but her eyes, which darted around like birds trapped in a house. “Where am I?”

“You’re just outside the Bible camp, Mrs. Meale. I’m going to run up there for help. Don’t worry. I’ll be right…”

She pushed herself up with her hands, not minding her legs, which were at awkward angles. Her eyes burned liked coals. “Don’t! Don’t go back there! Please, don’t go back there.” Tears that obviously hurt her cut cheeks rolled down her face.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Meale, but I don’t have a cell phone. I need to get you to a hospital. It’s just a jog up the road. I won’t leave you alone for long.”

She grabbed my arm with desperate strength. “He did this to me. Don’t you understand? Robert did this to me. If you go back up there, he’ll kill us both. He’s out looking for me right now. We have to get out of here!”

She threw frightened glances into the woods she had just dragged herself out of, and her terror was contagious. The forest was thick and ominous on each side of the road, barely containing the evil with it. “If we work together, can I get you into my car?”

Naomi nodded her head mutely and offered me her arm, raw from pulling her body along. I pulled her up, oblivious to the pain shooting through my ankle, and towed her to the passenger door. She was nearly as light as a child, but the drag of her legs made it hard to maneuver. I tried to be as gentle with her battered body as I could, but I was as tense as a razor wire, waiting for the wicked hand of Robert Meale to reach out and grab me.

Once I had her buckled in, I shambled around to my side and crossed my fingers that I hadn’t done any permanent damage to my car. The first three starts were grinding failures, and as my headlights flickered, I thought I saw a shape move in the woods to our right. I leaned over and slammed the lock on Naomi’s door and then locked mine.

“Please please please,” I begged. My Toyota listened. She fired up on the fourth attempt, and I executed the sharpest 180 turn on record. When I shifted from reverse to first, my bandaged ankle protested, and I knew I would pay for this tomorrow. However, I had more important matters to deal with now. “I’m bringing you to the hospital in Alexandria, Mrs. Meale. If I drive fast, I can get us there in a half hour.”

She had drooped like a doll when I set her in the car, but my words brought back the fight in her. “You can’t! Robert will kill me if you bring me to a hospital!”

“It looks like he just about did already.”

“You don’t understand, do you?” She shook her head and studied her raw hands, reluctant to reveal private details. When I turned right toward Alexandria, she made up her mind. “He’s a murderer,” she said softly.

“What?”

“First in Georgia, I suspected it, when Eliza Hansen and Paula Duevel went missing. Their parents both went to our church. When their bodies were found, I suspected Robert was involved, but he wouldn’t talk to me. We moved here right after. Then, it starts happening again when we get to Battle Lake. First Lucy, and now Lydia. I tell you, it’s Robert.”

“Why? I mean, why would he do that?”

She made a choking sound deep in her chest, like a child crying in a well. “Our baby.”

“I’m sorry?”

“We lost our baby.”

It occurred to me that Mrs. Meale might have a head injury. I tried to shift into fourth, and my ankle failed me. I pushed the car to forty-five in third gear. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mrs. Meale.”

“When Robert graduated from the seminary, we had a baby. Only we weren’t married.” Her shoulders were shaking, but it didn’t sound like she was crying. “Do you know how terrible that is, for a man of God to father a child out of wedlock? Do you?”

“And you lost the baby?”

She was quiet for five long seconds. Her voice, when it came, sounded like a saw cutting through wood. “She was nine months old. She died in her crib.”

“I’m very sorry.” My mind raced back to the birth certificate I had seen on the Meales’ dresser, the one with Alicia’s name, but not Alicia’s date of birth. “Your first daughter was named Alicia. You named your second daughter Alicia, too?”

“Yes.” The word was clipped, and the shoulders were no longer shaking. “We did. Second Alicia was adopted. After we married. Robert says she looks just like I did when I was her age.”

Second Alicia. Did they actually call her that? That would mess a girl up good. “And so now he’s killing girls who look like Alicia, and, apparently, like you did at that age?”

“The loss of a child will unbalance a man. You have no idea. His sorrow has turned him into a murderer.”

“Do you have any evidence?”

“I do. I do.” She sounded very tired. “But not tonight. I need to get clean, and get my head on straight, and then I’ll go to the police tomorrow. I swear to God.”

My head spun. If Robert was the murderer, then who was his accomplice? Julie had said two people tried to abduct her and Lydia. It was too much information to process. “Where is Lydia right now?”

She looked at me, one eye almost swollen shut. “I don’t know. I honestly don’t know.”

I squeezed the steering wheel. I wasn’t sure I believed her, but she was scared enough to jump out of the moving car if I tried to take her to the hospital. “Where do you want to go? Do you have friends?”

“My sister will take care of me. She lives on Hancock Lake, and she knows how to protect her house.” Naomi laughed, but it was humorless. “He’s having an affair too, you know. I suppose you can’t blame him, what with me being like this,” she said, indicating her immobile legs. “If only he had been more discreet.”

I took a right at the next stop sign. Apparently, I was going to drop her off at her sister’s, though it didn’t seem right. I suppose if she was really going to turn her husband in tomorrow, a night with family wasn’t such an unusual request. I couldn’t fathom the level of abuse a woman as traditional and God-fearing as Naomi would have had to suffer to reach this point. I guess I didn’t have to. I was sitting next to it. She looked like she had fallen into a meat grinder.

I was going to go to the police as soon as I dropped her off, however. If there was any chance at all that Lydia was alive, the police needed to search the Bible camp immediately. We couldn’t wait for Naomi’s evidence.

She trembled next to me as I drove. “You want me to pull over and grab you a blanket? I have one in the trunk.”

“Please don’t. You’ve done enough already. Just get me to my sister.”

I followed her orders quietly. When I turned onto Golden Pond Road, all the houses were dark, including Mrs. Meales’ sister’s. “What’s your sister’s name?”

She didn’t answer.

“Mrs. Meale? What’s your sister’s name?”

“I’ve always called her Sissy.”

I’m not sure why that would seem creepy, on top of everything else that had transpired tonight, but the way she said it made my skin crawl. I pulled around the circle of the driveway and turned off my car. “It doesn’t look like anyone’s home.”

“She’s always home. At night.”

“OK, then. I’m going to knock on the door and ask her to help me get you into the house. Are you okay with that?”

Naomi’s head fell against the seat. “Fine.”

I wasn’t so sure but didn’t see any viable choices. My car ticked as it cooled down, and I could hear bullfrogs singing, but otherwise, the night was silent, though still heavy with that electric scent of charged moisture. I closed my door quietly and limped toward the door. I was nearly to the wheelchair ramp when a heavy hand came down on my shoulder. I squealed and turned, tipping sideways as my sprained ankle gave out. I would have fallen to the ground if Weston Lippmann hadn’t caught me in his arms.

“What are you doing here?” The moonlight reflected off his John Lennon glasses and I couldn’t read his eyes. He held me while I steadied myself.

“Because I’m so far away from Statesboro, Georgia?” He made his faint Southern accent stronger. “Is that what you mean?”

I felt like someone had dipped me in a tub of icy lard. Of course he was from Georgia. He had come right out and told me that when we first met, but I had fallen for his “aw shucks,” nerdy professor act. I didn’t know how he was connected to Robert Meale, but I knew he had seventy pounds on me and two good feet. “I have to get something out of my car.”

He chuckled softly. “You’re pretty transparent, Mira. You’re as scared as a sheep on shearing day.”

I pulled clumsily out of his arms and glanced toward the house, which was still as dark as a tomb. Mrs. Meale appeared to have passed out in the car. I forced myself to look into his eyes while I reached for my stun gun with one hand and my knife with the other.

“You won’t need either of those. We’re on the same team.”

How had he known that I had two weapons and was reaching for them? “I’m not really a team player,” I said, stalling for time as I fumbled at the tangled spider knife hook in my waistband.

Quick as a rabbit, he pulled a Taser out from under his dark coat, held it up for me to see, and then holstered it as he pulled out a wallet and flashed his identification.

“It’s too dark to read that.”

“I’m a detective, from Statesboro. I was sent up here to follow Robert Meale, who is a person of interest in an active investigation.”

“What? And why are you carrying a Taser instead of a gun?”

He laughed again. “Mrs. Berns already talked to me about that, only she called it a ‘laser beamer.’ I told her it was so I could time travel. The truth is, Pastor Robert Meale has a habit of shielding himself with people. You never see him alone. I have my gun in my car but have been carrying the Taser.”

Something about his story didn’t sit right, but that might be because he was now telling me he had been lying to me all along. Where should I start believing him? Since his zapper trumped mine, there was no harm in at least pretending that I bought his story. “I have Mrs. Meale in the car. She’s been beaten up pretty badly by her husband, and she claims to have evidence that he’s responsible for the killings in Georgia as well as Lucy’s death and Lydia’s disappearance.”

“Why didn’t you take her straight to the police?”

“I was afraid she’d do something crazy, like jump out of the car and kill herself. She was adamant about not going to the police. Said she’d do it tomorrow. I figured I would go as soon as I got her safely to her sister.” I darted a glance at the car. My driver’s side window was open, and I didn’t want Naomi to know what I was up to. Fortunately, she looked like she was out cold.

Weston sighed and ran his hands through his flop of hair. “Let’s get her in the house and look at her injuries. We’ll decide where to go from there.” All business, he went to the passenger door and lifted Naomi out. The movement roused her, and she let out a groan. “Mrs. Meale? My name is Weston Lippmann. I’m going to get you into your sister’s house.”

She didn’t respond. I walked ahead and reached to knock on the door, but it was opened before my hand touched it. In front of me stood the same mousy-haired, pear-shaped, fever-eyed, poorly-permed woman who had been staring at Naomi with rapture at the Creation Science Fair. “Are you Sissy? I mean, are you Mrs. Meales’ sister?”

“I am.”

“She needs your help.” I stood aside, and Weston walked forward. Sissy blanched when her sister was carried past her. “She said her husband did this to her. She insisted that I bring her here instead of the hospital. Can you take care of her?”

“Does she have any broken bones?”

“Not that I can tell.”

“That stubborn mule. I’ll end up bringing her to the hospital anyway, you know. She needs a doctor.”

I nodded, relieved. “I was hoping you’d say that. You need help getting her into your car?”

“No, I’ve got help here.”

I looked around, seeing the inside of the house I had spent a couple good nights spying on. I was in the entryway, with the kitchen to my right, a main hall straight ahead, and a cavernous main room to my left. Weston was gently laying Mrs. Meale on a couch in the great room, talking to her quietly.

I wondered if Les was in the house, if that was the help Sissy was referring to. I didn’t have time for random thoughts, though. “Can I use your phone?”

Sissy smiled apologetically. “Don’t have one. I value my privacy.”

Weston came up and gave me a reassuring look before turning to Sissy. “Your sister doesn’t have any broken bones, just a lot of surface abrasions. I’m sorry to leave you like this, but we have to get going. You’re sure you can handle this?”

Sissy walked over to her sister, who was now sitting up. “I’m sure.”

“Okay.”

I followed Weston out the door. When it closed behind us, I looked at him out of the corner of my eye, not sure what our next move was. “You drove here?”

“I did.”

“Do you have a cell phone in your car?”

“Yes, but it’s not much good in these woods. No reception. Good thing I have a police radio.”

I relaxed an inch. “So you can call in what I told you about Lydia?”

“Yes, and get an ambulance here. You’re going to drive back to town?”

“I suppose.”

“Go straight to the Battle Lake Police Station. Don’t stop for anyone.”

“Deal.”

He tipped his head curtly and strode back through the woods, on the opposite side of the driveway from Les’ rope trap. As I walked to my car, a bright glint in the passenger’s side seat caught my eye. I opened the door, reeling at the coppery smell of Naomi’s blood. In the seam of the seat was her giant crucifix ring. I held it up toward the sky, and it caught the moonlight in a thousand glinting shards. There were lights on in Sissy’s house now, and I heard a door slam, presumably the one leading to the garage. I would just step back in the front door, leave the ring on the counter, return to my car, and head to town like a bat out of hell.

Back inside the house, I was surprised to see that Naomi had already been moved off the couch. I glanced around. The kitchen and hallway were also empty. Back and to my left were the stairs to the basement, and there was a trail of blood leading down them.

I stopped at the top of the stairs. “Naomi? Sissy?”

Something heavy crashed to the floor downstairs, followed by a pitiful whimper. I dashed down the wooden steps as fast as my sprained ankle would allow. At the bottom was a finished basement with sheetrocked walls and a floor covered in linoleum designed to look like wood planks. This main room was set up like a den with marble-eyed animal heads on the wall, two uncomfortable-looking chairs, and a small television. Three doors led off this den, and another soft cry came from the one kitty whompus from me.

I rushed to the door and yanked it open. My intestines turned light and icy as I realized I had lurched right into the spider’s web.

The large room was decked out like a small, gory church. Along the far wall were hung larger-than-life figures of Jesus on the cross, each one showing him progressively bloodier, his eyes bottomless pools of betrayal and sadness. To my immediate right was a life-sized nativity scene, complete with a baby Jesus. Only candles lit the space, but they provided me enough light to see the true horror: Lydia and Pastor Meale bound and gagged on the floor. Between them was a tipped statue of Jesus with nails driven through his hands and feet, this one a modest five feet in length.

My eyes picked up these details in a millisecond, which was a hair longer than it took for my ass to say, “Run!” I twisted toward the door, fully aware that the only chance I had at saving the three of us was escaping before I was discovered.

When I turned, I was confronted with a horrific sight. In the middle of the basement den stood Mrs. Naomi Meale, herself a gruesome ghost of a woman, a soft smile on her pulped face, her body still covered in blood and rags. She could walk, and she held a gun.

I swayed between the gory church behind me and terrible apparition in front of me and fought the urge to faint with all the desperation of a woman hanging on to a cliff wall by her fingernails. I stomped down on my sprained ankle and pain shot up my leg like an electric shock. With the pain came clarity and attention to the moment.

“You call that hurting yourself? Beginner.” She smiled, and one of the scabs on her face cracked. A thin trickle of blood rolled down her chin. She really had beaten herself up, or had someone else do it, just like she had really let a cigarette burn on her leg, her living, feeling leg.

I moaned and darted a glance at the stairs behind her. I couldn’t get to them, not with my twisted ankle, not when she had a gun on me. There was a door to my right and a door to my left, but I didn’t know where either one led. It was me, Mrs. Meale, and dead stuffed animals, and I didn’t know what to do.

That’s when I heard a creak at the top of the stairs. Mrs. Meale did not turn to look, but I saw feet coming down the carpeted steps. “Weston?” He came into full view and smiled at me ruefully. The room spun, or maybe it was my eyes. Weston was in on this with Naomi. What was the connection? How blind had I been?

As tears filled my eyes, Sissy came behind Weston, a mean-looking snub-nosed pistol in her hand. It was pointed at Weston’s back. My heart soared. The situation was bad, but Weston hadn’t lied about being on my team. My hope of Weston performing some slick police move to get us out of this was quickly squashed, however, when Sissy darted her hand forward, snatched Weston’s Taser out of his holster, and zapped him with it before he had a chance to change expressions. He slumped to the ground.

“Tie him up and put him with the rest.” Naomi didn’t take her eyes off me while she spoke. “Make sure you do a good job this time. We don’t want any getaways like we had at the Pagan Festival.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Sissy duck her head in shame. She was clearly the follower in this team, and the intense adoration I had seen her shower on her sister had been real. Sissy leaned her sturdy, farmwife body down, hooked Weston under his armpits, and dragged him toward the horrible church.

I stared back into Naomi’s unhinged eyes. “You lied about Robert. You’re the one who’s murdering girls who look like you used to. Why? Why would you do that?”

“‘As a jewel of gold in a swine’s snout, so is a fair woman which is without discretion.’ Proverbs, chapter 11, verse 22.”

“What? You killed three teenagers and kidnapped a fourth because they were without discretion?”

“Because they were fornicating harlots. I tried to show them the righteous path. I gave them a chance to repent. They didn’t, not until I had them in my own small church.” She indicated the horror show behind me, running her hands through her hair, ragged where I had cut it to release her from my tire. “It is my duty to turn girls off the trail that sullied me. That’s why our Lord let me walk down that sinful path with Robert, so I could prevent other girls from making my same mistake. Because of me, they will not despoil themselves. They will not know the searing pain of losing a beloved baby.”

“Why didn’t you let them go after they repented?”

She laughed, tightly. “Because it was too late. The girls were too far gone. They had cavorted with Satan and could not be turned back. I had to do the Lord’s work.”

“The Lord’s work? Kidnapping and murdering young women?”

“I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all of them also that love His appearing.”

“Amen,” Sissy seconded, as she stripped off a loud piece of duct tape from a roll on the couch and bound Weston’s wrists. She grunted and strained as she dragged him roughly to the horrific tableau behind me, pushing me aside as she struggled past. Weston was still out cold, though I thought I saw his eyelids flutter for a second.

When Sissy passed directly behind me, I could see sweat leaking through the back of her blue-flowered, cotton dress. I wanted to jump on her and make her stop, but she had arms like Popeye and would make short work of me if Naomi didn’t shoot me first.

Naomi scowled at her sister’s interruption. “I can’t imagine you would understand what it’s like to lose a child and to find forgiveness and peace only by agreeing to do God’s bidding. Robert pegged you as a heathen from the first. That may have been the only thing he was right about. He always came up short, though, my Robert.”

“What was all that about him being the head and you only being the neck?”

“The neck turns the head, my dear.”

Sissy returned to the den and stood by me with hands on pear-shaped hips, breathing heavily. “What are we going to do with her?”

Excellent question. “I could convert.”

“Tie her up and put her with the others.”

Sissy shoved me roughly. “And then what?” I asked. A mental picture of Lucy Lebowski, her perfect young back marred by a murky hole big enough to put a fist through, flitted behind my eyes, unwanted.

“‘If thine enemy be hungry, give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give him water to drink. For thou shalt heap coals of fire upon his head, and the Lord shall reward thee.’ Proverbs, chapter 25, verses 21–22.”

“You’re going to burn my house down?”

“It’s the only way, Sissy. I already wrote Robert’s suicide note and left it at the camp. Apparently he couldn’t stand the shame of kidnapping and killing four teenage girls. He beat his wife within an inch of her life and went to his sister-in-law’s house to kill himself and destroy all evidence.”

I shook my head. “That’ll never work. He’ll be found tied up. And how will you explain me and Weston being here?”

“The fire will burn his bindings off before they find your corpses. They can think what they want about you and your fornicating friend.”

“What about Sissy?” My mouth was dry with desperation. “The police will think she was in on it.”

“Sissy is officially at the Holiday Inn in St. Cloud. She made a great point of telling me, Alicia, Robert, and the entire congregation that she’d be gone all weekend and wouldn’t be back until Monday morning. She already checked in yesterday. Robert would certainly have taken advantage of that to finish his dirty work in her empty house.” An unsettling, joyful agitation burned in Naomi’s eyes and was reflected in Sissy’s. They had both tumbled over the edge of sanity and were operating on adrenaline and misplaced faith. Standing together, one sister solid as a silo and plain, the other bloody and wasted but oddly striking, I could see just a hint of a resemblance, a glimmer of what they may have looked like, young and hopeful, before this craziness had consumed them.

“What about Alicia?” Panic made me lightheaded. “You’d kill her father?”

“Not her true Father. This is all for Him. ‘If God be for us who can be against us?’ Tie her up.”

I put up a fight with Sissy, who had her gun stuffed in her waistband, but she was built like a brick shithouse, had ten more years of life experience, and was quick as mercury. She had me trussed like a Christmas pig and on the floor within minutes. She dragged me into the little room of horrors, dumping me against a crucifix. The giant nail driven through Jesus’ foot dug in my back. To my left was Weston, whose eyes were closed, but one foot was twitching, like he was chasing rabbits. Straight ahead, Lydia lay on her side in front of the nativity scene, hands and feet tied and facing away from me. Pastor Meale was in the same position as her, only to my right and closer to the door. I could see his eyes were closed.

Sissy, the workhorse, then brought down a five-gallon can of gasoline and pulled an armload of cotton rags out of the laundry room. She doused them with gasoline, the wicked, heavy stench of fuel slipping into our nostrils. The metal can made a chugging-sucking sound with every splash of gasoline she poured. She piled the incendiary rags on the couch and rug in the main room and trailed some up the stairs. I heard splashing on the floorboards above as she spread out the last of the fuel.

The smell was suffocating. When Sissy returned to place the empty can near Robert Meales’ slumped and trussed figure, I pleaded with her. “You don’t have to do this. You can stop it all right now.”

“It’s too late. I have to leave.”

I would have given all the gardens in Minnesota to do the same. The binding was biting into my wrists, but the pain kept me focused.

“Is it all set?” Asked Naomi, following her sister into the room. If I was hoping for a twinge of guilt or a last-minute reprieve, it wasn’t coming. Her eyes were as hard as obsidian chips.

“We should be able to light it from the wheelchair ramp out front,” answered Sissy. “We better get the car on the road first, to be safe.”

“Come on, then. You’ve got to get back to St. Cloud and I have to get back to the woods by the Bible camp.”

Not even a backward glance from either woman as they walked up the stairs. The stench of gasoline was so thick that it coated my eyes with a greasy sheen. I tried to shift, but the metal nail in my back scratched at my spine. I endeavored to push it away, but it snagged on the duct tape holding my wrists behind my back. I got an idea—a tiny, desperate idea. I pushed the duct tape against the nail and felt it snag again. I scooted my whole body back toward Jesus’ legs and began to rub the tape furiously against the nail. Robert Meale and Lydia were both lying still, in the same spots and position as when I had first seen them. I could touch them with my foot if I stretched. Weston had stopped twitching on the far side of the room and was now motionless.

I returned my focus to the task at hand—getting this damned duct tape off my wrists. It was hard to keep getting the right spot without being able to see what I was doing, and several times my wrists slipped and the gargantuan nail sliced me. I didn’t stop, the smell of gasoline pushing against the back of my throat like a finger. The front door slammed, and I imagined I could hear the whoosh of a gas stove firing—first the doused rags leading up the wheelchair ramp, through the entry, down the stairs, and into the heap of gasoline-soaked rags in the center of the lower den. From there, they would take off on the trail leading into this room. We’d probably suffocate before we burned, but it would be a race. I rubbed, harder and harder, and the tape grew hot. Harder and harder I rubbed, ignoring the hot blood trickling down into my cupped fingers.

I did hear it before I saw it, the whistle of oxygen being removed, followed by a fiery tongue licking down the stairs as fast as a snake. In desperation, I stretched out my leg and kicked over part of the nativity scene in front of me. The manger fell on the cotton rags, disrupting the chain at the door. Still, when the flame snarled toward the entrance of our room, it lit the gas fumes, creating a searing sonic boom that left everyone without eyebrows. My heart raced, and I felt every hair on my body stand up.

From this angle, I could see that the rug and one of the chairs in the den had caught fire. The manger had bought me some time, but not much. I rubbed with even more gusto, telling myself that my wrists could not feel pain, that they were just instruments. I felt eyes on me and looked up at Lydia. Her head was turned toward me, and her eyes were wide, scared, and young. I wondered if she had been alert the whole time. Tears were coursing down her face, but she didn’t say a word, even though her mouth was not bound. Across the room, Weston was beginning to shift, but Robert Meale remained still as a statue, his eyes closed, on his side but facing me.

One monumental tug on the nail, and there was suddenly give in my wrists. I pulled them apart at an angle and was able to free them of the duct tape. Sweat coursed down my face as I tried to draw oxygen out of the heated air. I felt like a roasting pig on preheat. I turned to the Jesus statue and used my tender and bleeding hands to wiggle the railroad-sized nail out of his feet. When it was free, I plunged its sharp point into the duct binding my ankles. From the corner of my eyes, I saw the couch go up in flames that were now licking hungrily at the walls. In the center of the main room, the rags burned ineffectually, their gasoline power long gone, but the linoleum at the edges of the walls was curling and blistering like an open sore.

I pulled my legs apart, but the duct tape was still too tight to rip. I plunged the nail twice more into the empty spot between my ankles, trying not to notice how difficult it was to breathe. Across from me, Lydia whimpered, her first sound.

“Mira?”

“Weston? Are you awake?” He moaned and sat up drunkenly. I ripped viciously at the duct tape, and suddenly, I was free.

I rushed over to Weston and set him free, too. He was still groggy, and I slapped him across the face hard enough to leave a mark.

“Get out now, Weston! Get Lydia and go!”

He stood up shakily. “What about you?”

The flames were kissing the door frame, little pecks at first, but it only took seconds for the fire to become a towering demon, its tongue darting out lasciviously into the room and along the ceiling. I coughed out orders. “I can walk out of here. Go now! There isn’t time to get her bindings off.”

He scooped up Lydia, and for a terrible moment, I thought he was going to pass out. He rallied himself, wrapped his cape around Lydia and himself, and then charged through the flames and up the stairs.

I crouched low, but the smoke was everywhere. Using my teeth on his duct tape, I had Pastor Meale free in less than six seconds. “Get up! I know you can hear me. If you don’t get up now, you’ll die.”

The pastor’s voice, deep and sad, rumbled out of his body. “‘But God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another.”

There simply wasn’t time. I reached over and grabbed the nativity scene baby Jesus that had rolled out with the manger, and I conked Robert over the head with it. It was a good, solid noggin-bonker, and it laid him out cold. “The Lord helps those who help themselves,” I whispered hoarsely.

I was able to drag Robert all of three feet before my ankle gave out. Fortunately, Weston had returned down the fiery stairs, a wet blanket over his head and another in his hands. He shoveled Robert Meale onto his shoulders, and together we scuttled clumsily up the stairs, the flames caressing our legs, begging us to stay.

Free of the house, I was confused by the complete and utter darkness of the outdoors. “Where’s the moon?” I croaked through a smoke-seared throat.

Thunder answered my question, followed by raindrops as big and heavy as grapes. Fresh water poured down on my shoulders, as sweet as balm, cooling my raw wrists and hot skin. I guess the August Moon Festival had worked its magic.

Ironically, the torrent of rain kept Sissy Meales’ house on Hancock Lake from burning to the ground. The gory church-room, the den, and the stairs were the only areas to suffer real damage. Weston Lippmann was as good as his word and had a radio in his car. He had an ambulance, a fire truck, three state troopers, and two unmarked cars at Hancock Lake within twenty-two minutes of sending out the word.

Lydia was traumatized, but she would heal. Robert Meale came to shortly after the ambulance arrived and was pronounced physically healthy except for a concussion. His immortal soul was a different matter.

After Weston gave instructions on where to find Sissy and Mrs. Meale, he and I were driven off in the ambulance. On the ride he told me Sissy’s real name was Constance Penwick, long-suffering younger sister of Naomi Meale, nee Penwick. Likely, Sissy was the reason the Meales chose to move to Battle Lake. In the course of his investigation, Weston had found no other connections tying them to this area.

I took wicked pleasure at the thought of Mrs. Meale, lying in wait in the woods, a smirk on her twisted, puffy face as she heard the police sirens blaring toward the Bible camp. She would think they were coming looking for her to tell her her husband had gone up in smoke; they would really be coming to handcuff her and toss her to the mercy of very human judges. All her self-flagellation was for naught.

The ambulance brought Weston and me to the Douglas County Hospital in Alexandria, where the same nurse who had originally treated my sprained ankle—telling me sternly not to put any pressure on it—was still on duty. When she saw the grass and dirt stains on the bottom of my straggling bandage, surface burns on both feet, charred hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes, and wrists rubbed raw, she looked at me like I didn’t even deserve ankles. This time, I took the crutches.

I took a week off to recover, leaving Mrs. Berns and Sarah Ruth in charge of the library. Sid and Nancy took turns running baked goods out to me and tending to my lawn, garden, and animals. It had been raining steadily and pleasantly since the rock-and-roll thunderstorm the night of the fire, and all of Otter Tail County grew furiously, brazenly lush and as humid as a greenhouse.

I healed along with the parched ground. The burns and abrasions mended quickly, but it took all of the week before my ankle went from pumpkin-sized to merely swollen. I had to chop off a couple inches of hair, my lungs weren’t yet at full capacity, and it’d be a few months before I’d have eyebrows again, but I was alive. When I returned to work, I had a new writing assignment for the paper: cover the affirmation celebration Pastor Winter wanted to hold the coming weekend. I researched the topic, mostly by pumping Mrs. Berns for information. She and I were alone as Sarah Ruth had failed to turn up for work.

“Tell me again why Pastor Winter was out at the Bible camp the night Lydia disappeared.”

Mrs. Berns leaned her face into the palm of her hand, her elbows on the front desk across from me. Her eyes were sparkly, like they always are when she’s got a good story. “He knew they were up to no good. He was looking for Lydia, just like you.”

“Why’d he suspect the Meales?”

“He’d been at that Wisconsin seminary with Robert when he and Naomi lost their baby. Said it was a real scandal. Well, not so much said it, but I could tell that’s what he meant. Said it was a tragedy, broke Naomi in half. She just stopped walking, eating, started talking in tongues. The Meales disappeared after that. When they showed up in Battle Lake last fall, Pastor Winter ogled them.”

“What?”

Mrs. Berns rolled her eyes. “It’s called the Internet. You want information, you ogle it. Welcome to the twentieth century.”

I rubbed my ankle, feeling no need to correct her about what century it was or the difference between ogling and googling. “And what’d he find out? When he ogled them, that is?”

“Same thing you found. They went to Georgia, started a church, but Mrs. Meale just got crazier and crazier and talked him into starting that whacky Christ’s Church of the Apocryphal Revelation. Then, a couple teenagers get shot in the back, the Meales skip town, and next thing you know, they’re in Battle Lake. When Lucy turned up shot the same way, Winter knew there was a connection, but didn’t know what. He was trying to find that out when you saw him at the Bible camp the night of the Festival.”

I stretched, enjoying a comfortable silence with Mrs. Berns as we both chewed our thoughts. I realized I still had an unanswered question. “So, how’d the Meales know the teenagers in Georgia?”

“Robert Meale didn’t. Naomi Meale confessed to meeting them both at a girl’s after-school center she volunteered at. Said when she saw them, she knew she had to save ’em.”

I shivered. “With help like that, you almost don’t want to leave the house.”

Mrs. Berns nodded agreeably. “Pastor Winter feels terrible he wasn’t able to prevent Lucy’s death.”

Pastor Winter hadn’t been able to save Lucy or find Lydia, but he had done what he could to heal the town. He started by initiating a calling chain in his congregation, arranging for members to be with Lydia and her family at all times. They would be up to their ears in hotdish, ham, buttered dinner rolls, and jello salad until Lydia was comfortable and the family felt safe once more. Lucy Lebowski’s family would never feel safe again, but I knew Pastor Winter would make sure they felt the support and comfort of their community for as long as they lived here.

Once he was satisfied he was doing everything in his power to heal the town, he turned to his religion. Calling together some of his most active congregants in an emergency meeting, he put forth the need for some large-scale event to restore faith in the church. He wanted to call it the “Apologies, Not Apostasies” Festival and hold it as soon as possible. He envisioned closing down Lake Street, bringing in a Christian band, and having arts and crafts booths, bake sales, and profuse literature highlighting the “upbeat” parts of the Bible along with walking, talking pastors from other communities called in to heal the town through Jesus’ words.

Sid and Nancy talked him down from the lofty pulpit, gently arguing that people may have had enough evangelizing for a while and that an encore to the August Moon Festival, which had been sadly interrupted, would be the way to go. After all, they pointed out, Pastor Winter had often told them that our goodness is seen in our actions, not our words.

They agreed on a town-wide potluck with arts and crafts, bake sales, and Not with My Horse playing in the afternoon. All proceeds from the bake sales would be divided evenly between Lucy’s and Lydia’s families. Kennie agreed to close off Lake Street from one p.m. to six p.m. this Saturday, and I agreed to write an article promoting the event for the Battle Lake Recall.

After I zipped off the Community Festival article, I edited the Recall police log. Although this was an activity I always enjoyed, I took particular pleasure in the third item.

WEDNESDAY, August 18

10:01 p.m. Denny Warner called in, reporting that neighbor has fire in fire ring. Dispatcher said that was legal. Mr. Warner said fire is too big. Dispatcher advised as long as it’s in ring, it’s legal. Mr. Warner said neighbors are making too much noise. Officer en route.

FRIDAY, August 20

9:43 a.m. Nelson family reports their grandmother, Louise Nelson, is locked in their car outside the nursing home and refuses to go back in. Officer en route.

SUNDAY, August 22

11:11 p.m. 17-year-old male minor pulled over for suspicious driving in 1993 Dodge Caravan, license plate GH 857. Alicia Meale, 19-year-old female, found, apparently hiding, under blanket in rear of vehicle. Reported bruises on her neck. She declined to press assault charges.

Ah, hickeys. The calling card of young lust wielded by sons of farmers all over the Midwest since time immemorial. And what did Alicia expect, making out with a high school kid in his parents’ minivan? He probably begged her to wear his letter jacket and she was so excited that she wrote his name in hearts and wondered what it’d be like to marry him. Or maybe I was confusing my brief, sad adolescence with her protracted one.

I had no doubt that life had just bumped Alicia out of the self-involvement she had been enjoying for so long. She was now on her own, with her three nearest relatives in jail for serious crimes: her mother, for three counts of murder and multiple counts of kidnapping, attempted murder, and the murder of the two teenage girls in Georgia; her aunt for one count of kidnapping and multiple accounts of assault and battery; and her father for accessory to murder. Robert said that he hadn’t known what had been going on, or even that his wife could walk, but he was going to have to prove that in court.

Now, Alicia needed to figure out what she was doing with her future and how she was going to define herself, free of her parents’ rules. It’s hard to be a rebel when you’re the only one who cares what you do. I hoped she ended up making some good choices for herself; my money was on cosmetology school. Hey, I was willing to cut her some slack, now that I knew she had only been Second Alicia her whole life.

I had one more job to complete. Despite Weston’s advice, I knew I had to tell Tina what I had seen in the woods at the August Moon Festival. It might ruin our friendship, but that was a price I was willing to pay if it would help her escape an abusive marriage. I hobbled over to her shop on my lunch break, describing the scene in the woods at the Festival as clinically as possible, omitting the whiteness of Tom’s rear as he pumped in the moonlight, but making clear that I had witnessed him and Annika being unquestionably intimate.

“That’s not possible.” Tina’s eyes grew shiny with tears.

I wanted to be anywhere else in the world. “I’m sorry.”

“Are you sure they weren’t just talking?”

“They were on the ground, naked.”

Tina shook her head repeatedly, like a dog with water in its ears, and then broke down sobbing. Part of me had figured she’d be relieved to get out of a relationship with that clod, but that just goes to show how much I know about relationships. It took me a half an hour to calm her down. Finally, she asked me to leave and went into the back room like a broken woman.

Back at the library, I felt like a heel, but knew I had done what I had to. I had just settled into my seat, grateful to put my battered ankle on the front counter, when the front door slammed open. In charged Kennie, murder in her eyes. Her hair was plastered to her head from the rain that had been drizzling pleasantly on and off all morning. Her clothes clung to her like honey on a spoon, only one of those really big spoons you use to scoop out mashed potatoes.

“Nice weather,” I said, to no one in particular.

Mrs. Berns had sidled up next to me for a front row seat when she first caught sight of Kennie. “It is if you’re a seed,” she said agreeably.

“Mira James!”

“Hi, Kennie.”

“Gary Wohnt is gone!”

I sat back. “Where’d he go?”

“A four-week leave of absence.” She slapped a typed letter on the counter. “Four weeks!”

“He didn’t say where to?”

“No. He just wrapped up his end of this murder and kidnapping business and hit the road.”

“What’re you going to do?”

She peeled a straggle of soggy platinum hair off her forehead and tossed it back. “Find a replacement, I suppose.”

“Who’ll work at the job for just four weeks?” I grabbed Mrs. Berns hand as she began to raise it.

“I don’t know. This is just terrible for the town.”

More likely, it was terrible for Kennie. She clearly still carried a torch for Gary, even though he had cheated on her with God. Come to think of it, Gary’s absence might be bad for me, too. As much as our personalities clashed, he had always come through for me. This might be a mystery I’d need to look into more. “You’ll fix this, Kennie. You always do.”

Kennie humphed and strode back out. I suppose she could simply promote one of the three deputies until Gary returned. But where had he gone? Suddenly, I had a tickly feeling along my hairline as I realized I knew exactly why Sarah Ruth was not at work today. I should be getting official word in the next day or two.

The on-and-off rain of the past week had soaked deep into the earth, massaging roots and worms all across Minnesota. In its wake was a lush greenness and air almost too thick to breathe. If you listened hard, you could hear plants humming, “Hallelujah” in high, squeaky voices. The moisture had broken the hot snap, but the Battle Lake First National Bank thermometer declared this Tuesday morning to be anything but cool. Seventy-seven degrees, and it was only nine a.m.

I had slept in, fed and watered my animals and myself, and left for work with barely enough time to open the doors, water the plants, turn on the lights, and dust. I’d leave shelving the books to Mrs. Berns, who was in the back room primping before our first patrons arrived—getting ready for the show, she called it. The return bin was overflowing, however, so I grabbed some books off the top to move to the counter. I had a hard enough time balancing my own body without adding cargo, and two tomes slipped out of my hand. That’s when the note fell, drifting to the ground like a feather.

It was simple, and not at all surprising: it was, after all, Gary Wohnt I had smelled on her two weeks ago.

Dear Mira:

Thank you for all your hospitality. You made me feel welcomed in Battle Lake, and you run a wonderful library. I don’t think you know how much you are admired and respected. If I had stayed at the library my whole life, I don’t think I could have met the standard you’ve set. However, the Lord has chosen a different path for me. He has thrown love in front of me, and it would be a crime to refuse this Gift. God has brought Gary Wohnt and me together, and together, we are going to explore this beautiful earth. I am sorry I am not able to give you two weeks’ notice. I hope you understand.

Yours in Faith,

Sarah Ruth O’Hanlon

I had mixed feelings. Sarah Ruth was a hard worker, but she also had a vague shiftiness about her. I was thinking specifically of her hiding that she had been dating Gary and not telling until she was asked if she had been a Christ’s Church of the Apocryphal Revelation congregant. That crooked quality was certain to interfere with her job and our friendship down the line. I was better off without her.

Gary Wohnt, though? He just might be irreplaceable. I took comfort in the fact that he had only taken a four-week leave of absence and not quit his job altogether. He might be hedging his bets, or not as serious about the relationship as Sarah Ruth. There was hope he would be back. Anyhow, the fact that they had been dating explained their weirdness for the past two weeks, the secretive phone calls, awkward encounters, and odd behaviors. Guess you can keep a secret in a small town.

“I knew that God groupie was never going to last. No spine.”

“Mrs. Berns! Don’t sneak up on me like that.”

“I’m eighty-nine. I got nothin’ but sneak. What’s that part about you being a great librarian?” She tilted her head at the letter.

I crumpled it up and tossed it in the nearest wastebasket. Perfect shot, no rim. “She’s just stroking me. You know how it is when you quit a job. You don’t want to feel like a heel, so you try to make your boss feel better.”

“You are still the boss. What’re you going to do about getting a replacement now? Somebody up there must really want you to stay on in Battle Lake.” Mrs. Berns winked at the sky.

“If that’s the case, He certainly does move in mysterious ways. Psychotic, passive-aggressive, mysterious ways.”

“Speaking of heavenly bodies, is that Johnny Leeson coming up the sidewalk?”

I glared at her, not at all in the mood for bad jokes. When the door donged open, I turned, expecting to see Les Pastner, or some other repellent human being. When my eyes connected with Johnny’s tentative, cerulean, bottomless, thick-lashed peepers, I fell off my crutches.

He rushed to my side and put one tanned, muscular arm around my waist and gently pulled me up. “Are you all right? Why are you on crutches?”

His thick and curly dirty blonde hair brushed against my neck, and I smelled his signature scent, a mixture of green earth and something clean and natural, like a fresh-cut cucumber. “I’m technically not on crutches at the moment. I’m on you.”

He smiled, his face inches from mine. My heart was pumping so hard that I blushed, and I pulled away and hobbled over to the counter. He followed. “I’m gone for a few weeks and you manage to break your ankle.”

“It’s not broken, it’s sprained. And you’ve been gone five weeks.” So nice of my harpy shrew desperate alter ego to come calling. It got so lonely in my head without her.

“The U-Mad project was finished early.”

I pushed my hair behind my ears, taking silent inventory on my appearance. Clean, sporadically brushed hair, no makeup, white tank top, fading bruises circling my wrists like bracelets, cut-off shorts, and flip-flops. Oh, and no eyebrows. Yep, just like he had left me, give or take a wound and some hair. “You’re just back to get some stuff, then?” My voice arched high and squeaky with the last word. Sniffing out killers, vandals, and secret lovers, I was good at it. Talking to men I really liked, not so much. And the sad truth, impossible to deny with him across from me, was that I did really like Johnny. Oh boy, did I.

He scratched his head, and looked over at Mrs. Berns. “Can I talk to Mira alone for a minute?”

“You can, but she says even stupider things when I’m not around to keep an eye on her. I’ll stay and coach her, if you don’t mind. It’d be the best for both of you.” Mrs. Berns nodded encouragingly.

“Um, okay. I brought you something, Mir.” He walked back to the door and picked up the two potted plants he had set down when he saw me biff off my crutches. “It’s a pepper and a tomato plant. I went to your house and saw someone had trashed your garden.” He looked from my wrapped ankle to my wrists and back to my face, silently asking if there was a connection between the violence to my garden and the violence to me. I didn’t offer any insight. “Anyhow, I can help you plant these.”

“Thanks, but I can do it—”

“With your sexy-hot body right next to my side. Please don’t wear a shirt and oil your chest like you’re about to cook some eggs on it,” Mrs. Berns suggested.

I glared at her, but she refused to look at me.

Johnny laughed. I forgot how nice his laugh was. It was open and friendly, and had the same huskiness as his voice. “I’ll see what I can do. But first, I wanted to tell you something.”

Both Mrs. Berns and I leaned forward, me anxious and her curious. Before Johnny could finish his thought, the door banged open, and Kennie slinked on in, dressed in a Halloween stripper-cop uniform. “I have an announcement!”

As one, Johnny, Mrs. Berns, and I looked her over from her five-inch patent leather pumps, to her fishnet stockings, to her hot pants that were actually on the tepid side due to some blessedly unidentifiable skin flaps that were escaping, to her button-down shirt complete with silk tie and badge. Around her waist she wore a belt with a flashlight, gun, and billy club, and on her head was perched a police hat of a design not seen outside of 1980s cop shows.

“You’re going on a donut run?” Mrs. Berns asked.

“That was quotable. Somebody get me an embroidery pillow. No, I have wonderful news. Since Gary Wohnt is leaving town for four weeks, I’ve stepped in as the new Battle Lake Chief of Police, so look out crime!” Kennie opened her arms and twirled, using her beauty pageant background to keep upright in her stilt-like stilettos.

Oh my. I shook my head. “Can you just do that?”

“Honey child, I can do it all.”

As if responding to a song cue, Tina of Tom and Tina’s Taxidermy strode through the door, only it took me a couple beats to recognize her. Her head was high, her shoulders were straight, and there was a touch of cockiness in her step. She had morphed into a redhead since our meeting yesterday, and the auburn color complemented her skin and eyes nicely. Without waiting for her turn to speak, she set herself in the center of the group. “I won’t take much of your time. I just stopped by to say thank you.”

My head was reeling from the revolving-door morning. “For what?”

“For shoehorning me out of a terrible relationship. I always hated that store. Dead animals and jewelry? It’s stupid, and it always smelled like a morgue. I put it on the market this morning.”

I smiled at her sassiness. “Tom’s okay with that?”

“Doesn’t matter. I owned the store before we were married, and I kept it in my name. I’ve been squirreling money away for years, too. I’ve got a house in Florida in my mom’s name, and I’m moving there for good. Tom wasn’t the only one with tricks up his sleeve.” She chuckled. “I’m going to be just fine, and I can’t thank you enough.”

Mrs. Berns and Kennie eyeballed me suspiciously. I knew they were going to hammer me for details later. Johnny just stood back and took it all in, the plants still cradled in his brown arms. Every time I noticed anew how white his T-shirt was against his sun-kissed body, I felt a little shiver in an area I thought I had consigned to a life of lonely darkness, interrupted only by the occasional bike ride. “You’re welcome, but this is all you, Tina.”

“You bet it is. It’s all me, finally.” She gave us all one great wink and went back out the way she had come, humming “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.”

“That bitch stole my thunder.”

“Kennie, no one will ever steal your thunder. I promise.”

Mrs. Berns and Johnny nodded in acknowledgement of the plain truth.

“Don’t you have some police work to do?’

“I suppose I do—but before I go, I want to ask you if you’d be my paid consultant. You’d be reimbursed out of city funds. You know, for solving the odd mystery.”

I shook my head. I could still smell the burn of gasoline in my nostrils. “I’ll get back to you on that.”

“Just don’t wait too long. Battle Lake gets busy, and I need the help.”

When she left, Johnny seemed reluctant to pick up where he had left off. He settled the plants on the broad front counter and made a show of pinching dead leaves. Mrs. Berns and I waited not so patiently. He turned around when he was ready. “Mira, what I wanted to tell you is that I’m not going back to Madison. Not this year, anyhow. My mom deserves to have me close right now.

“I feel bad about leaving the way I did. Not just leaving my mom, but leaving you. I had every intention of coming over to your house that night, and I was really looking forward to spending time with you.” He looked at Mrs. Berns, who gave him the “and…?” look. “And I really like you. I want to see if this can go somewhere between us. I realize I have to earn your trust back. I’m hoping you’ll give me a chance.”

“Not only will she give you a chance, she’ll give you a—”

“Mrs. Berns!” When she didn’t leave right away, I pointed toward the back of the library. “The books need to be shelved. Now.”

“Fine, but don’t look at me when you can’t get that hoof outta your piehole.”

When she was out of earshot, I looked back at Johnny, but it was difficult. I was suddenly shy. “We’re going to have to back it up. You know, back it up to friends. For a while.”

He looked relieved. “That’s fair. I can do that.”

Suddenly, I smiled. It was fair, and it felt right, with an undercurrent of pleasant anticipation. “How is your mom doing?”

“Good, but she needs me closer until she gets her feet back under her.”

“It does feel good to be needed, doesn’t it?” I had decided last week, Sunday, in the ambulance on the way to Alexandria, that I was going to stay in Battle Lake, at least through the winter. This place had its problems, don’t get me wrong, but I felt like I belonged and like I mattered, and that was a new sensation for me. I took Johnny’s unexpected arrival as confirmation that my choice to stay was a good one. “Say, what would you think about you and your mom having dinner with me and my mom? She’s going through a tough time, and it’d be good for her to have more friends.”

That would give me an excuse to call her and explain the strange letter she was about to get, postmarked in Clitherall, ranting about a crazy pastor who was kidnapping and murdering teenage girls, and ending with an apology for how I acted when she told me that she had breast cancer. I leaned back in my library chair, once again queen of my domain. I was warm with a confidence in myself as alien in my life as hangovers had become familiar. Maybe a little faith wasn’t such a bad thing.

The End

About the Author

Jess Lourey spent her formative years in Paynesville, Minnesota, a small town not unlike the Murder-by-Month series’ Battle Lake. She teaches English and sociology full time at a two-year college. When not raising her wonderful kids, teaching, or writing, you can find her gardening and navigating the niceties and meanities of small-town life. She is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, the Loft, and Lake Superior Writers.

Table of Contents

Title_Page

Copyright

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

About_the_Author