Old World Murder (2010) (13 page)

“I don’t need you to tell me …” Chloe stared at her double reflection in his sunglasses and swallowed what she’d been about to say. “I won’t forget.”

The diner was noisy and smelled of fried eggs and baking bread. Most of the customers were farmers and truckers, by the looks of them. Always a good sign. Chloe bought a newspaper and an enormous apple fritter, and settled down at a corner table. Three cups of coffee later, she felt more ready to face the day.

A large check freed her car from George, the mechanic. Car repairs were not in the budget. Chloe was starting to think she’d have to hit her parents up for a loan. Depressing thought.

An incident report freed her from further responsibility at the sheriff’s office. A polite young deputy declined Chloe’s offer to produce the window screen in question. “Call us if you see any further suspicious activity,” he said.

My suspicions are spread over three counties, Chloe thought, as she drove toward Old World Wisconsin. The historic site … her own farmhouse … Mrs. Lundquist’s home. Maybe she should have searched the dead woman’s home more thoroughly when she had the chance. But for
what
?

____

Roelke sat at the station that afternoon, trying to tune out the music from Marie’s radio. Her favorite station played groups like Air Supply and The Little River Band. The bland sugar-pop made his teeth ache.

All right. Focus. He opened his file box of index cards, and spread out his big Eagle street map in front of him. Whenever he answered a call, Roelke either created an index card for the address or added to an existing card. Then he made a tiny corresponding X on the map. Red for domestics, green for drugs, blue for everything else. A line of red Xs marked a house on Hawthorne Drive. The woman who lived there called 911 whenever her husband hit her, but then always refused to press charges. A line of blue Xs marked an elderly widow’s house. She lived behind the school, and called whenever she heard kids on the grounds after dark.

Now he penciled a circle around an empty rectangle that represented Stanley Colontuono’s house, a nondescript ranch at the end of a quiet residential street. Roelke had checked his record. Two traffic violations in the past three years, nothing more. Nothing more in the county files, either.

Roelke frowned. He didn’t have a damn thing to pin on Stanley Colontuono. But the man had been hiding
something
, that night at the bar.

“Watcha looking at?” Skeet Deardorff suddenly loomed over his shoulder. He was a round-faced, ginger-haired man in his mid-twenties who was already married and the father of two.

“Nothing much.”

“That’s the blue house at the end of Marigold Court?” Skeet leaned close and tapped the spot Roelke had circled. “Did you get another disturbance call?”

Another? Roelke turned his chair to look at Skeet. “What was the first one?”

“I responded to a call … I think it was two Friday nights ago. A neighbor complained about loud music.” Skeet stepped to his locker, opened it, and began unbuttoning his uniform shirt.

Roelke frowned. “Did you write it up?”

“No,” Skeet admitted, with a sheepish shrug.

“
Jesus
, Skeet!”

“I was about to go off shift, and I was dog-tired.” Skeet said defensively. “It was no big deal. I knocked on the door, the guy answered, I told him to turn the tunes down, he did. He even apologized.”

“Hunh.”

On the radio, Olivia Newton John was begging someone to get physical. Skeet pulled a polo shirt over his head. “Say, do you know if that uniform allowance got approved?”

“It did,” Marie said over her shoulder. She didn’t stop typing. “It’ll show up two checks from now.”

Roelke reminded himself that there was no such thing as a private conversation when Marie was in the building.

“See you tomorrow,” Skeet said, slamming his locker. “I’ve got class.”

Skeet was taking criminal justice classes at Waukesha Tech, one at a time, somehow squeezing them in between work and family life. He’d probably get the full-time spot, sloppy reports or not, Roelke thought sourly. He folded his map away. Time to head out.

“Roelke.” Marie actually stopped, swiveled in her chair. “You got a problem with that house at the end of Marigold?”

“Not really,” Roelke said carefully. “Why?”

“Because my mother lives on Marigold. When I was giving her a perm the other day, she was complaining about all the traffic in and out of that house. She said it had suddenly gotten bad in the past couple of weeks.”

“Yeah?” This was getting more interesting.

“Yeah. A lot of kids, mom said.” Marie snorted. “Teens, she meant. There’s mostly older folks on that street, so it stands out.”

“Any pattern? Particular days, or times of day, that she sees people coming and going?”

Marie shrugged. “I didn’t ask. Just told her to call it in if she saw anybody breaking any law. Last I knew, it wasn’t illegal to have a lot of company. Mom’s bored, and she always has to have something to fuss about. I don’t pay much attention. You and Skeet just reminded me, that’s all.” She swiveled her chair back to the typewriter. Conversation over.

That was OK. Marie had given Roelke something new to mull over as he headed out on patrol.

“So, what’s the problem
here?” Nika asked, as she and Chloe approached the Tobler house.

“The wallpaper is already peeling away from the plaster. And the village lead wants some interpretive context for the artifacts in here.” Chloe took a long slow breath, and unlocked the door.

The remembered sensations slapped Chloe as soon as she stepped inside. A corporeal sense of unhappiness quivered in the small room.

Nika crouched by one of the wallpaper seams, fingering a puckering edge. “I ran into this problem in grad school. Do you use modern paste, knowing it will be more durable? Or period formulas?”

Chloe’s skin began to prickle. She sensed frustration.

“My professor said …”

Enough. Chloe pivoted and stepped back into the sunshine.

Geez Louise. This was going to be a problem.

Chloe couldn’t remember the first time she’d felt a presence in an old building. Her memories of family vacations were a blur of long car rides and visits to historic sites. Sometimes these creaking places gave her distinct impressions of emotions: contentment, sadness, loneliness. “This is a happy house, Mommy,” she remembered whispering loudly in the middle of a guided tour. Her parents had smiled, the guide had been charmed, and Chloe hadn’t realized that she was being indulged, not affirmed. It was only on another trip, when she’d burst into tears at the front door of a homesteader’s cabin, that she’d learned that everyone else didn’t react to old buildings the way she sometimes did. “Don’t go in!” she’d sobbed. “It’s a bad house!” Her father had eventually carried her to the gift shop while her mother and older sister Kari took the tour.

Eventually Chloe got used to tuning the sensations out—just as she tuned out background chatter when reading or studying in a crowded coffee shop. She also learned not to speak of her impressions. By the time she’d decided to enter museum work, it took an unexpected whammy to rattle her.

The Tobler house rattled her.

Nika followed her outside, looking cool, collected, and distinctly unrattled. “Hey, you OK?”

“Just a little tired. I was listening, though.”

Nika looked dubious, but she shrugged. “Well, as I was saying, I prefer period
everything
—materials and techniques. That way the whole fabric of a building becomes a research tool. Instead of the interpreters being embarrassed by peeling wallpaper, they can explain that we’re experimenting. Visitors love behind-the-scenes stuff.”

“Yeah.” Chloe locked the door, and they headed back down the walk. “But you know, I don’t even know if wallpaper falls into my purview. It might be more of a structural issue. I think I need to talk to the curator of research—what’s her name?”

“Margueritte Donovan.”

Of course Nika would know that. “Come on,” Chloe said, glancing at her watch. “We’re due in the Norwegian area.”

____

An hour later, Chloe stood on the porch of the Kvaale House, facing a dozen interpreters—some new, some veteran. “How many of you have visited some historic site and found that the entire tour consisted of a docent pointing out one artifact after another?” she asked. “‘This settee was made in England … this teapot dates to 1743 … that portrait is of Sir Roger himself’ … et cetera. That’s what I call a furniture tour. If you take just one thought away from our time together today, I hope it’s this: artifacts are most important because of what they reveal about the people who made, owned, or used them.”

She let that thought sink in before continuing. “Let me show you an example.” Chloe nodded to Nika, who held up an 8x10 black and white photograph.

“What do you see?” Chloe asked.

“Some people and a bunch of stuff,” one of the college students said.

An older man took the photo from Nika and squinted at it thoughtfully. “Mid-nineteenth-century people sitting in front of a big frame house, with a sewing machine and croquet set and nice furniture. It looks like that one woman has an unusual collar on … maybe ethnic?”

Chloe nodded. “The shape of that woman’s collar suggests a Norwegian style. Why do you suppose this family dragged furniture outside for the photograph?”

“Well … they wanted to make a record of it.”

“This photograph was taken by a Norwegian-American photographer named Andreas Dahl,” Chloe told them. “I think this family wanted to show how far they’d come since moving to Wisconsin. When they moved from their first cabin into a new frame house, they posed with some of the possessions they were most proud of.”

“We show that transition here in the Norwegian Area,” Delores Timberlake pointed out. “Visitors can learn about a newly arrived immigrant family at Fossebrekke, and a more established family here at Kvaale.”

“Exactly!” Chloe nodded at Byron, who had walked up the drive to join the group. “Here at Kvaale, the ethnic pieces have been largely relegated to display status. They’re no longer being used; the family has new American-made items instead. Your job isn’t to talk about the artifacts themselves, but to tell the broader story.”

Cindy, the frustrated spinner Chloe had met on her first visit to the Kvaale farm, raised her hand. “But sometimes visitors ask about specific artifacts,” she said. “Are you saying we can’t answer their questions?”

“Not at all!” Chloe felt a welcome stir of her old passion for museum education. “Use that piece to help address a bigger interpretive theme. If a visitor asks about the spinning wheel, you can tell them when it was made and how it works. But then go on to tell them about the role of sheep in the Kvaale family’s economy, or the agricultural shift from subsistence farming to diversification, or about gender work patterns in Norwegian families. See what I mean?”

Some of the trainees nodded, some looked thoughtful. “If you use the collections to illustrate compelling human stories,” Chloe concluded, “what you say will resonate with visitors long after they return home.”

Byron stepped forward into the reflective lull. “Excuse me,” he said. “I’ve got copies of the July schedule.” He handed them to the nearest interpreter to pass out. “Chloe, may I have a word?”

“Sure. Nika, why don’t you tell everyone about your textile project?”

Chloe jumped down from the porch and followed Byron a short distance down the lane. “What’s up?” she asked, noticing belatedly that his face was rigid with anger. Shit. What had she done now?

“What was that?” he demanded.

“Um … what was what?”

“Who told you to tell the trainees how to interpret their buildings?”

“You asked me to help with summer training—”

“I asked you to talk about collections! Not interpretation!”

“The two are obviously intertwined,” Chloe said carefully. “What did you think I was going to say?”

“I expected you to talk about
artifacts
. I expected you to tell the interpreters what kind of cleaning and care you want them to provide. I expected you to tell them what objects they could use in daily programming, and what objects they shouldn’t touch. I expected you—”

“You expected quite a lot,” Chloe snapped. “Unfortunately, you failed to let
me
know about those expectations. You told me to show up in Norwegian at four o’clock and talk to the interpreters. That’s it. For God’s sake, Byron, there are fifty buildings on this site, and I’ve only been here for a week! I’m not in a position to give specific instructions to the interpreters yet!”

“Well, let me tell you something.” Byron jabbed the air with one forefinger. “You’re not in a position to provide training about educational techniques, either. That’s
my
job. Do me a favor and stick to collections.” He turned and stalked back down the lane.

____

“What was that all about?” Nika asked, when the interpreters had trudged back toward the main parking lot.

Chloe tugged on the lock on Kvaale’s front door, making sure it was secure. “You noticed, hunh? Did everyone?”

Nika shrugged. “I don’t think many of the interpreters caught on.”

“Many,” not “any.” Everyone on the payroll would soon know that the curator of interpretation and the curator of collections had interrupted training to have a major row.

Chloe sighed. “I seem to have stepped on Byron’s toes. He evidently expected me to talk about the importance of turning tin cups upside-down to dry, not using collections as a springboard for interpretation.”

They were walking toward the small Norwegian area parking lot. The sky was overcast, the air sticky and humid. After a moment Nika said, “That stuff about collections care is important. But the way I see it, an interpreter’s most critical job is to engage visitors in a meaningful way. If that happens, visitors will go home and tell their friends to visit the site. They’ll sign up as volunteers, and join historical societies, and take their kids to other sites. There isn’t a museum in this country that has adequate funding. This one sure doesn’t. And nothing here will improve unless we can spark visitors to provide more support themselves, and to demand better support from the state.”

God bless the young and idealistic. “Thanks, Nika.”

“I thought your use of the photographs was effective, too,” Nika added. “Where’d you come up with them?”

“My mom. They’re copies from what’s evidently a large collection at HQ in Madison.”

“I love old photographs, especially of women. So many women left no written record of their life at all.”

“You know what they say,” Chloe said. “Anonymous was a woman.”

“Amen to that.” Nika waved one elegant hand. “Listen, don’t worry about Byron. He probably didn’t get enough sleep last night. His baby’s been sick. Once he gets over his snit I’m sure he’ll be glad to hear your ideas.”

Chloe blinked. Byron had a baby? How did Nika
know
that? Nika had only been on site a week longer than she had, but the intern seemed to already be on friendly terms with everyone, permanent staff and seasonal.

They reached their cars. “Maybe you’re right,” Chloe said. “But I don’t think I’ll be making suggestions about interpretation to Byron any time soon.”

____

The farmhouse was stuffy when Chloe got home. She carried her bottle of rum and a warm, flat soda out to the front porch and sank gratefully into one of the old folding lawn chairs her father had left her. After a few sips she tried to focus on her latest problem: Byron. Oddly enough, she liked him. Sure, he was young and sensitive and quick to take offense. He also seemed to care passionately about his job, the site, and the interpretive staff.

She had been like that, once.

She needed to have a strong working relationship with Byron. And, she hadn’t had a chance to ask him to identify any interpreters left on staff who had worked there in 1977. Why hadn’t she foreseen his possible objections to her training talk?

Well, she didn’t have a very good record of understanding men, now did she? Or of spotting trouble before it smacked her upside the head?

She certainly hadn’t with Markus. Three days after her miscarriage, Chloe had been curled on the sofa when Markus came home from work. He’d sat down on the floor beside her. “We need to talk,” he’d begun. Chloe remembered staring at a shaft of sunlight coming through the window, and noticing that the ivy plant needed watering. “We’ve had a good run, right?” he’d said in his accented but flawless English. “We never made assumptions, right? Maybe we should look at this as a sign.”

Chloe barely remembered packing, saying good-bye to friends at the museum, arranging transport back to the States. With nowhere else to go she landed at her childhood home. Chloe’s parents evidently had no idea what to say about her abrupt departure from Switzerland.

“You left Ballenberg without having another job lined up?” Mom had asked. “Well, my goodness.”

Her father hadn’t done much better. “You’ve got a lot to offer, kitten,” he’d said with fake heartiness. “You’ll land the
perfect
job soon.”

Neither of Chloe’s parents had even asked why she’d left Markus and Ballenberg so suddenly.

Chloe had applied for every museum job available. The first call came from a small historic site in Solomon, North Dakota …

Stop thinking about that time!
she ordered herself. You’re letting things overwhelm you because you’re tired. And you’re tired because you got about three hours of sleep last night. It’s OK to be down …