Slugfest

The woman at the Bambi-no booth looked haggard. Show life didn’t seem to agree with Lorraine Shepard. Traveling from one city to another, sleeping in strange beds and just being away from home and all the familiar things that make it home—your sheets, your soap, a coffeemaker you can trust is clean—took its toll. After a few days, I was even feeling it, but it showed on Lorraine Shepard’s face as if she’d been out in the fields picking cotton. She put on a tired smile for the three or four people at her booth, but her pitch had no energy and they smiled politely and then drifted away.

The booth was bare-bones—an umbrella stand filled with baseball bats and two tables covered with a stretchy cloth preprinted with the word Bambi-no! in large, bright blue type. Next to the name was the image of a deer about to be brained by a baseball bat. Even to a seasoned gardener with no love for deer, it seemed a tad angry. On the tables were half-gallon bottles of the magic potion. From a distance, they looked as benign as jugs of apple cider, like those stacked in any supermarket once October rolled around. As you got closer the smell became overpowering. Perhaps that’s what was responsible for the look on Lorraine Shepard’s face and the deep marks etched on her forehead that resembled the pause button or the number eleven.

I hovered, listening to the woman speak with other prospective customers. It was a tough sell. At Primo’s booth, people were either intrigued by the art or they kept walking. Here, Lorraine and her husband—the directory listed a partner named Marty—had to constantly battle the skeptics and the naysayers, or worse listen to people recite their own homemade recipes for a concoction that would repel deer. When she did find a receptive ear, two out of three times the listener balked at the price. I found myself hoping her husband was a better salesperson or at least had had a caffeine jolt to combat the afternoon lull.

When it was my turn, I tried asking a question unlike the same few I’d heard repeated in the last fifteen minutes.

“So, Bambi-no—does it have to be reapplied after it rains?” My delivery was perky. I was a real gardener, not a cop pretending to be a gardener. It should have gone well. It didn’t. “You are the one millionth person to ask that same question this weekend. Give that woman a kewpie doll.” I half expected bells and buzzers to go off.

Lorraine Shepard didn’t completely snap, but it was a pretty athletic bend. She shook her head as if it were the dumbest question she’d ever heard, then launched into her prepackaged reply. “Yes. After every rain. Same thing for areas near the sprinklers.” She was practically gasping for breath.

“I don’t mean to pry,” I said, “but are you okay? You seem a little out of sorts.”

Lorraine thanked me. Her husband had been called to a meeting and she’d been on her own all day. She was just tired. I offered to bring her a cold drink or a chair—they hadn’t sprung for the chairs either—but Lorraine said her husband would be back soon and anyway the floor was almost closed. No sooner did she say it, than Marty Shepard appeared, staring at my badge and barely masking his irritation that his wife would use what little energy she could muster on someone who wasn’t a buyer and who couldn’t possibly do them any good.

I jokingly asked if he thought the name Bambi-no would be a problem for gardeners who were Red Sox fans. He was not amused. I spared him the trouble of answering by leaving on my own but not without making eye contact with his wife, who nodded as if to say, Yes, he’s a jerk, but he’s my jerk.

The next name on Garland’s short list was BioSafe, the company selling SlugFest. I rushed to their booth just in time to see the last salmon-clad employee flinging off her ugly shirt and tossing it behind a meeting room door, then dashing off.

Everyone else was gone. The door was slightly ajar. I was just your average gardener, hoping to keep the slugs at bay. That was my rationale for entering the SlugFest meeting room.

Forty-four

The air at El Quixote smelled of beer and barbecued chicken wings. Even without the famous red dress, Brian, the bartender, greeted me as if I were an old friend. He pointed toward the back, where Rolanda was ensconced in a booth that was more private than the table we’d occupied the night before. She was already sipping a drink, so I ordered an Amstel and waited at the bar until he came back with the frosty bottle.

“No glass, right?”

“Thanks.”

I slid into the booth opposite Rolanda. The cold beer went down easy.

“Nikki called to cancel, dinner with Russ. I smell a reconciliation,” Rolanda said. “You look in the makeup bag yet?”

“I thought we’d share the moment.” I pulled the white plastic bag Nikki had given me out of my backpack. Inside was a freebie cosmetics case from one of the department-store makeup companies—a free-with-purchase offer. Spend seventy-five dollars on face cream—which should come with a label 100 Percent Delusional—and we will give you this stylish, nylon, made-in-China pouch that cost seventy cents. What a deal. I’d fallen for it myself.

“High-end label,” Rolanda said. “Our lady doesn’t shop at the drugstore.”

“We don’t know that yet. I’ve gotten some of these special-offer packages at Marshalls.”

“Good tip.”

I unzipped the case and upended it over the table with all the drama of someone unlocking a safe from the Titanic. The contents spilled out, and Rolanda and I spread our hands to make sure nothing rolled off the edge. It was the stuff that dreams were made of. Whoever left the bag in the ladies’ room before the blackout was an equal opportunity shopper. Everything from Maybelline Great Lash to Yves Saint Laurent concealer to Guerlain spray bronzer. This woman was prepared for every contingency.

“That concealer goes for forty or fifty bucks, and it’s only slightly better than Almay’s,” I said.

“Want to leave her a note?”

I thought of the women I’d spoken to that day, starting with my breakfast meeting. Fake Cindy didn’t look like she could afford fifty-dollar concealer. Besides, when you’re that young, how much do you have to conceal? Let me rephrase that—how much under your eyes do you need to conceal?

The rest of the items were pricey—lipsticks, expensive hair cream, and a tube of brow gel. I took a swig of my beer and pulled out my copy of the show directory.

“First off, there’s no guarantee this bag or the argument Nikki overheard has anything to do with Garland Bleimeister, although it’s tempting to think so given the reference to ‘a kid that had to be taken care of’ and the ‘guy who worked here.’”

Rolanda was unconvinced. “Weren’t they the words Bleimeister used in his note … ‘I have to be taken care of’?”

It was a common expression, but it was one more thing that made us think the two events were connected. I told Rolanda about my visits with Terry Ward and the real Cindy Gustafson.

“The honey lady had a sister who went to the same school as the dead kid?”

Rolanda thought that was promising, but I didn’t see it. “There’s probably a big age difference, even if the sister was ten years younger. Cindy’s a mature woman, very comfortable talking to me about her ex-husband, his indiscretions, her finances. She even made a few jokes.”

“So that’s it—if they’re funny, they can’t be the bad guys? I must have been out that day at cop school.”

“Okay, not scientific. I admit it.” Still, Cindy had been so at ease with me, it was hard to think of her as a criminal. Or a potty-mouthed, castrating she-devil like the one Nikki had overheard in the ladies’ room. Maybe that’s what sociopaths do. They get you to trust them and let your guard down before they strike. But I couldn’t see her spray painting her face with bronzer. She wore her porcelain skin like some badge of honor, the way women did in the nineteenth century.

“What about Terry Ward? The Bag Lady?”

“It’s Bagua.”

“What does that mean anyway?” Rolanda asked.

I wasn’t really sure. I seemed to recall bagua was some kind of map or grid used in feng shui. It told you where things were supposed to be in your house. Not your keys or your eyeglasses, which might be more helpful— your chi, your energy. The good news was, almost anything negative could be counteracted with a mirror, which Terry could cheerfully provide in every price range. I liked the idea of easy fixes but didn’t totally subscribe to the practice.