Hard Cheese Read online

  HARD CHEESE

  by Carl Brookins

  Published by Carl Brookins at Smashwords

  Copyright May, 2012 Carl Brookins

  ISBN:978-0-9853906-1-7

  Cover design by Karen Syed

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  Dedication

  This story is dedicated to all of the thousands of Minnesota State Fair employees who, over the years, have worked so hard to make the fair the spectacular entertainment that it is and has been for many many years.

  HARD CHEESE

  Carl Brookins

  “It’s the last week of August.”

  “I noticed. Nights are getting longer and cooler.”

  “State Fair time.”

  “Heavier traffic along I-94. It’ll get back to normal soon.”

  “Big crowds this year, I guess. In spite of the economy.”

  I lowered the morning newspaper and looked out the window on the east side of my house. We’d spent the night in my Roseville place, rather than drive back across the city to Catherine’s apartment. The sun was shining and I saw a sparrow flit by. I think it was a sparrow. There was silence. Catherine hadn’t turned on the radio this morning.

  I reached for my coffee, said, “What’s up?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  I smiled. “I have detected, over the past months, that you rarely give me idle conversation.” I looked at the lovely lady sitting across the table. She elegantly raised ome well-defined eyebrow.

  Not looking at me, she said, “Can’t get nothin’ by you, slick, can I?”

  I smiled. “Keen of eye, sharp of wit, fleet of foot, that’s me.”

  “Well, my short friend, I wish to visit that great gathering in St. Paul called the Minnesota State Fair.”

  “Really. I am surprised, and as you know, the detective business has left me with very few surprises in this life. In the next, who knows?”

  “Philosophically, a non-sequiter, Sean. One cannot know what one does not know.”

  “Let’s get back to your desire. I assume this means you wish me to escort you to the Fair?”

  “I like ‘accompany me’ better, but yes, that’s the basic idea.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Okay? Just like that? No arguments?”

  “None. It isn’t that I’m eager to join great sweaty boisterous crowds of folks wandering the grounds just over there in St. Paul, or technically Falcon Heights, but I am pleased to accompany you, most anywhere, you know that.” I reached for her hand and kissed the palm.

  ****

  What a deal; we drove to the Health Partners parking lot at Como and Eustis and climbed aboard a bus for the ride to a gate on the very west side of the fair grounds. It was right there on Dan Patch Avenue. The last time I went to the state fair, the street was named Commonwealth Avenue. The noise from the grounds slammed us when we exited the bus and we were immediately enveloped in a crowd of happy fair-goers. Mostly at this end of the grounds they were young, from barely out of their rug-rat stage to shifting groups of teens laughing and scuffling as they roamed madly.

  “Let’s walk through the Midway,” she said and clasped my hand. Her face was shiny and she had a sort of glow, like this was all new to her. The Midway, only a hundred yards or so away from our gate, featured a couple of acres of rides, concessions, games of questionable skill, and lots and lots of people. Lights, action, wall to wall. So we headed into the Midway.

  “C’mon, baby,” Catherine cried, grinning like a maniac. “Win me a fuzzy animal.”

  The barker for the ring toss, sensing a hot prospect, gestured us closer.

  “Here we go, man! Win your lady a prize. But you have to have tickets. Get your tickets at the booth!”

  So I stood in the fast-moving line and bought ten bucks worth of tickets. The ring toss game looks easy and there was a crowd three deep all the way around the tent. They cheered wildly every time one of the suckers tossed a ring at the bottles. I traded a bunch of tickets for rings. I don’t remember how much it cost me but finally after observing several disappointed losers, I saw that the rings were just big enough to fit over the necks of the bottles tightly lined up, but they had to be tossed in a flat arc. So I watched and pitched and eventually won a small soft stuffed bear for my lady.

  Catherine whooped and applauded when I presented her with the prize.

  Most of the rides in the Midway were of the thrill variety. The show tents seemed to be absent. Where had Club Lido gone? When I was a lad, and squired a girl from my high school to one of the nearby county fairs, we concentrated on the make-out rides. You know, the ones that took you slowly into dark places where you could grab a smooch and hold hands, or other parts of your partner’s anatomy, depending on how well you knew each other.

  The rides this year seemed designed to help you lose your lunch and whatever loose change you had in your pockets. The music and the roar of the loudspeakers and generators seemed quieter than I remembered. I glanced up at Catherine. Enjoyment reigned on her face. She clutched that small bear like it was made of spun gold.

  No freak shows, but one barker, a bosomy brunette in a top hat and tight-fitting tail coat over a very short skirt, was haranguing the crowd from the platform in front of an enormous bilious-colored tent. The tent had large paintings of odd-looking humanoid creatures, mostly female. We stopped to watch, leaning against the jostling crowd. The woman reached down, giving front row standees a good look at her cleavage. She picked up a bright shiny steel-colored sword that looked to be about two feet long.

  “Ah,” I said. “A sword swallower.”

  “How, d’you know?”

  “Mere deduction, m’dear, I shouted. The woman threw back her head, waved the sword about and slid it down her throat, all the way to its hilt. The crowd applauded and a man sitting next to the woman on stage belched a plume of blue fire into the air. Behind us motors rumbled and other barkers exhorted the shifting rumbling crowds. The woman with the hilt protruding from her mouth slowly bent forward at the hips and the sword, glistening wet now, slid out of her mouth. There was another scattered round of applause.

  “Fake, you think,” smiled Catherine. “Plastic? Rubber?”

  “I can’t say from this distance, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s a piece of rigid steel or aluminum.”

  We strolled to the end of the Midway, taking in the sights the sounds and especially the smells.

  “How about something to eat?” I asked. “Mini-donuts? Pork chop on a stick?” Catherine declined.

  Across the street a block away was Heritage Square. Catherine pointed and we went there. First thing inside the gate was a small bookstore called J. O’Donohugh. We stopped there. I wanted to see if they had any used copies of the Shell Scott books I didn’t yet have in my paperback collection. They didn’t and we moved on down the row of old railroad and racing cars, a blacksmith and a leather shop. It was quieter here so we paused at the performing stage. The sign said Fiddle Festival Starting Soon. A small Polka band was just exiting the stage. Polka music not being one of my favorite forms of entertainment, I felt no disappointment.

  A single performer took the stage. He was a big man wearing a long beard, a faded orange shirt and blue jeans. I guess he had shoes on, but I couldn’t tell. His raggedy pant legs dragged on the ground. He played a mean acoustic blues guitar with a big sound. He rolled into a John Lee Hooker piece and after a minute or two, the sparse crowd stopped
talking and began paying closer attention. Except for a very few.

  Three rows in front of us two men in rough casual clothes seated side by side were having what appeared to be an intense conversation. During a quiet space in the music I heard one of the two quite clearly. “That’s just hard cheese, innit.” At that the other man stood up and walked quickly past us. He was holding a small round plastic-wrapped package about two inches thick and five or six inches across. It looked like a bagel or a smooth doughnut without a hole. If it had been black it could have been a hockey puck.

  I got back into the music, enjoying the sight of my friend softly swaying to the strong beat. The stuffed bear bounced contentedly on her lap.

  After the guitar came fiddlers, singly and in groups of two, three and four. When they all finished, Catherine excused herself to visit a nearby facility while I amused myself with my other favorite pastime, watching people.

  Catherine wanted to visit the animal barns so we walked across the fairgrounds amid the floating aromas of beer, brats, sweat and the occasional wash of some kind of perfume or cologne. The crowds grew larger and louder. Somebody stepped on my foot and left a smear of mud on my red Ked. But it didn’t matter. I stopped at a booth and snagged a paper tray of fresh deep-fried onion rings. I shared them with my companion and we walked into the cool and dim Sheep Barn. A different set of smells and sounds met our senses. The aisles between the pens were littered with straw and people. We observed sheep of wildly varying size and coloration. The biggest crowds were focused on the pens with the lambs.

  “Newborns, you think?” asked Catherine.

  “No idea. You know I’m a committed urban warrior. My backyard critters and the cats are pretty much it for me.” A movement in a side aisle attracted me. A scruffy looking man in a black and white striped shirt with a wide boat neck was walking swiftly away from us. In one hand he clutched a small white sack. He disappeared down another aisle and I wondered why I had even noticed him. Catherine was talking to a young woman about her height who smiled at her and then glanced down at me. Her smile widened.

  What? I was wearing a pair of short checked cargo pants that just touched my knees and a deep blue short-sleeved shirt with bold yellow sunflowers on it. Not, I admit, exactly sartorially splendid, but Hell, it was the State Fair, right?

  “C’mon, sport,” Catherine tugged at my arm. “They are going to judge the miniature horses in a few minutes.”

  So we went to the judging barn and found places to sit in the bleachers among the scattered sparse crowd. It felt good to get off my feet for a little while. Catherine had it right, miniature horses, in several classes, none of them over about three feet high. I fleetingly wondered if this was some kind of backhanded comment about my stature. Catherine, standing just over six feet in her stocking feet, was not above making occasional gentle jokes about my height, five-two on a good day. But I knew she liked small animals. Me included.

  It was quiet in the barn, the sounds of the nearby Midway muted to a background roar except for the occasional high-pitched squeal of someone on one of the more bizarre high-altitude rides. So it wasn’t surprising that I easily tuned in on nearby conversations. I pulled Catherine’s head close and murmured, “Check this out. Behind us and a couple rows to our right. There should be a scruffy looking fellow in a bold black and white striped shirt with a boat neck.”

  A minute later Catherine glanced over her shoulder and confirmed what I had heard. The man in the boat-necked shirt was there. I’d twigged to his British accent.

  “He’s with an attractive woman,” Catherine said. “Odd, she looks familiar somehow but I can’t place her.”

  Another group of humans finished prancing through the dirt-floored arena, posing and presenting their small equine charges in various pre-set stances. Ribbons of various colors, purple, blue, red and yellow went to smiling and proud handlers, while the public address announcer presented names and locations of the winners. There appeared to be an almost endless number of classes of these horses with only subtle differences.

  We decided to find something to eat and as we rose, I let my gaze idle around the bleachers near us. Boatshirt and the woman with him were in intense conversation and didn’t seem to have much interest in what was happening in the ring. I had an odd sensation that I too had seen the woman before, but where?

  We left and Catherine dragged me to a bench outside the big brick Horse Barn where we rested for a while, watching the passing crowds.

  I found us some iced milk from a booth that didn’t cost me an hour in a long line after Catherine declined cotton candy. Then we went into the Horse Barn. And our pleasant day-trip disappeared.

  We were somewhere in the center of the big barn, having encountered several enormous equine creatures being maneuvered here and there down the aisles. The horses’ hooves made sharp clopping sounds on the concrete. Some of the animals seemed a little skittish so we avoided getting close. I was a few steps ahead of Catherine, who had stopped to peer through a barred grate at a small brown ass. Maybe it was a donkey. I’m no expert on these things. I went on around the corner and came face to face with an open stall. I remember there was a lot of what looked like fresh hay on the floor. Also a body.

  He was slumped on the floor against a corner of the stall, one arm raised as if he were about to wave at somebody. The effect was ruined because his wrist was pinned to the wooden wall by one steel tine of a pitchfork. His striped black and white boat shirt glistened red down the front and there was blood from his pierced wrist on the shirt-sleeve. His head drooped forward but it looked to me like his throat had been slashed.

  I recoiled and grabbed at Catherine. Too late. Her breath hissed out and she blanched at the sight of the dead man. “Call the cops,” I said. “Then turn around and just stand there. We have to keep people out of here.”

  She fumbled in her purse and fished out her cell. There was a rustle of straw and a dark figure darted out of the next stall and bolted down the aisle.

  “Hey! Stop,” I yelled and tore after her. Her? The figure made a fast turn at the junction into a side aisle. I was running full tilt, gaining on the fleeing figure and when I got to the junction, I stepped on it. A pile of manure. Horse droppings. My leading foot shot out from under me and I flew across the aisle to crash splat against the stall wall. Stunned, I collapsed in a heap. By the time I recovered, my quarry was gone with the wind.

  ****

  “You got a name?” The cop, a Ramsey County deputy, was sweating. It was hot in the barn and he was unhappy. Killings just didn’t go with the projected friendly atmosphere of the Great Minnesota Get-Together. Fun, frolic, a congenial meeting of rural and urban inhabitants. Murder was definitely not in the plan.

  We’d explained how we’d happened onto the dead guy and he’d checked out my creds so we hadn’t been dismissed to the sidelines, although I could tell Catherine was more and more interested in quitting the scene forthwith.

  “No. I saw him maybe two or three times in the judging barn and the Sheep Barn, as I told you,” I said.

  “Yeah, but you didn’t know him.”

  I shook my head.

  “But you know he’s English.”

  “No, what I said was I heard him talking to a man in Heritage Square at the Fiddle Festival. He sounded English, and he said ‘hard cheese innit’ to the guy we saw with him. Then a while later we saw him again. He was sitting with a woman in the horse judging barn.”

  The cop nodded, still scribbling, and one of the crime scene techs stood up and showed us what he had in his gloved hand. It was a dirty scrap of card, the remains of an entrance ticket to the Fair. In tiny faint scribble I could just make out two letters: HC.

  “Hard Cheese?” I muttered. “Code, maybe?” The scrap disappeared into a small paper bag the tech was holding.

  An hour later we were released, the body had been removed, and I’d been able to clean most of the crap off my tennies. They still smelled though. Fortunately when I fell a
fter piling into the stall wall I hadn’t landed in the manure. My knee was bruised and so was my hand, the one I’d snapped up to protect my face at the last instant.

  We left the horse barn and strolled back toward the Grandstand which would take us in the general direction of the gate we came in at. When we got to Dan Patch Avenue I stopped. “Look,” I said, “I think I’d like to go over to the Dairy Building for a look around.” Catherine peered at me, one eyebrow raised. I think she caught that expression from me. “Cheese, they make cheese from milk. Dairy.”

  I was going to say more but she nodded. “I get it, I get it. You think there’s a clue there?”

  “I don’t know but maybe.”

  “Okay, but the words might mean nothing, you know.”

  At the Dairy Barn we found lots of people in line for milk or ice cream and displays of all sorts of things milky and cheesy. We hung around for a little while and nothing happened. We didn’t recognize anybody either.

  “Let’s try Ag-Hort,” I said then.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Agriculture-Horticulture. That building over there.” I pointed.

  We went there. The Ag-Hort is a big white building with a central atrium under a tall lighted tower. Eight big exhibit halls radiate out from the center. Each hall is given over to a particular theme. We came in through the outer entrance to the Southwest hall and past a lot of crop displays. I never saw so much variety. The corn exhibit alone seemed to have a million ears of dried field corn. It was very impressive but I was more interested in the people milling about. We came across a long snaky line of people shuffling along. There were soft exclamations of wonder. Everybody seemed focused on the platform in the center of the wing. I carefully scanned the room, looking for anyone recognizable. Then I peered between two people at the focus of everybody’s attention.

  “Wow,” I said.” Several large pumpkins squatted there. And when I say large I do not exaggerate. Each one of them, round saggy and deep orange or whitish in color, must have weighed over 400 pounds. Catherine pointed at the sign. It explained we were looking at the entrants into the giant pumpkin challenge, sponsored by a local family of pumpkin growers. Top prizes were some serious money, I saw.