Old World Murder (2010) (17 page)

Chloe staked her claim to a quiet spot well off to one side, settled down, and pulled out her notebook. If she didn’t know how to find the ale bowl, perhaps she could figure out why someone else was trying so hard.
Something
made this bowl particularly desirable. What?

She wrote POSSIBLE REASONS across the top of a fresh page, then began collecting her thoughts:

1. Bowl came from a particular region of Norway.

2. Bowl was made in Wisconsin, not Norway—rare.

3. Bowl was made by a well-known artist.

What else? Chloe tried to think. What had she told all of her trainees about valuing artifacts? Artifacts are most important because of what they reveal about the people who made, owned, or used them.

4. Bowl was owned by a famous person.

Chloe nibbled her lower lip as she looked over her list. She hadn’t written the obvious because it made no sense. But nothing about Berget Lundquist’s quest made sense, so Chloe scribbled one more item:

5. Bowl was a treasured family heirloom that some unknown descendant wants back.

Mr. Solberg believed that all of Mrs. Lundquist’s relatives were dead, but what if he was wrong? Chloe stared over the water, where teen-aged boys dove from a wooden platform anchored well off shore, and teen-aged girls in barely there bikinis bobbed on inflatable rafts, pretending to be unaware of the boys. And suddenly Chloe thought of something new.

Mrs. Lundquist’s son had been killed in Vietnam. Could he have had a child before leaving for Vietnam, or while there? If so, perhaps Mrs. Lundquist hadn’t known about it. Maybe she discovered late in life that she was indeed a grandmother, and desperately regretted giving away her family heirloom.

It was also possible that some other distant relative—a long-lost cousin?—might have surfaced. And that, Chloe thought, is what I will try to discover when I go back to Mrs. Lundquist’s house tomorrow. The photograph albums, buried correspondence, even the untouched financial records—

“Hey! It’s Chloe!”

She slapped her notebook closed as Justin ran to greet her, scattering sand. Libby followed more slowly, with Dierdre in her arms.

“Well … hi!” Chloe managed.

“What are you doing here?” Justin asked.

Chloe was wondering the same thing about them. “Just relaxing.”

Libby let Dierdre slide to the ground. “Sorry to intrude.”

“You’re not intruding.” Chloe tried to smile. Today was not a good day to make small talk with Roelke McKenna’s cousin.

“I’m going in the water,” Justin announced.

“Stay where I can see you,” Libby warned. “And don’t go in above—”

“I
know
.” Justin ran toward the water. His baggy red swimsuit flapped around his legs, and the strap holding his glasses in place made a funny horizontal line against the back of his head.

Libby pulled a plastic scooper and bucket from a beach bag and handed the toys to Dierdre. The little girl wore a frilly pink bathing suit. Her skin showed a few white traces of recently applied sunscreen.

“My ex didn’t show.” Libby’s profile was tight as she tucked a floppy hat over Deirdre’s head. “Again.”

“Men can be pigs.”

“They can indeed.” Libby leaned back on her hands, watching her son.

After a moment Chloe began to relax. This still might be OK.

“So, what do you write?” Libby asked.

It took a moment to make the transition. Then Chloe considered her last project, a work of historical fiction set in Switzerland, burned page-by-page when she’d left Brienz. “Um, well, I—”

“Hey, Libby!”

Libby looked up sharply, cast a quick glance at Chloe, and jumped to her feet. “Therese! Don’t tell me you’ve got that little guy out already!”

Chloe belatedly recognized the approaching brunette. The swell of her belly had transformed itself into a small lump in the middle of a safari-print sling worn across her chest. Chloe sat very still, watching Dierdre shovel sand, trying hard not to listen to Therese’s chatter: “Here, Libby, want to hold him? No, it’s OK, really! Just keep him wrapped against the sun.”

The lump was transferred into Libby’s arms. “He’s so sweet,” Libby murmured, swaying back and forth the way women do when cradling a child. Chloe shifted her gaze to Justin. Someone needed to keep an eye on Justin. After a few more eternities she was aware of Libby easing the infant back to his mother’s arms.

Then Therese’s attention landed on Chloe. “Oh, hi!” Therese bubbled. “We met last week, remember?”

“Of course. Hi.”

Therese dropped to her knees. “I went into labor later that night! Princess Di hasn’t had her baby yet. Oh well. Derek’s a week old already, see?”

Derek was thrust forward for review. “He’s lovely,” Chloe said.

“Want to hold him?”

“No, I—”

“It’s OK, really!” Therese slid the baby toward Chloe’s lap. “Just watch his head.”

Chloe felt the soft nap of a thin cotton blanket, and the solid warmth of the tiny life it cradled, being eased into her unwilling arms. The warm weight stirred—an arm moving in sleep, perhaps, or a leg. She smelled
baby
, talcum and milk and something indefinable.

The air seemed to get thinner, less able to satisfy her lungs. “Please—take him,” she said. Libby was already scooping Derek up and away.

Tears spilled over as Chloe rose to her feet. “He’s beautiful. Congratulations.” She tossed the words at Therese as she grabbed her things and stumbled away. She aimed for her car but swerved at the last minute and bolted into the public restroom, a smelly cement-block affair. Chloe dove into one of the stalls, latched the door, dropped onto the john. Curled over her knees, trying hard to be quiet, she sobbed.

Chloe emerged from the
stall damp-faced, hiccupping, and slightly nauseated. Libby was leaning patiently against the sink.

“Oh,” Chloe said. Her head felt fuzzy. “Where are the kids?”

“I asked a neighbor to watch them.” Libby turned toward the door. “Come on. You’re coming home with me.”

Chloe watched a daddy longlegs walk up the wall. “I don’t want to see Roelke.”

“Roelke’s not there. Come on.”

Ten minutes later, Chloe was sitting in a chaise lounge on Libby’s patio. “I’m sorry that thing happened with Therese,” Libby said, handing her a glass of lemonade mixed with crushed raspberries.

Chloe sipped. The concoction was strong and cold.

“When was the last time you ate a good meal?”

“Um … the last time I was here.”

Libby fired up the grill and moved back and forth from the kitchen with silent, fluid efficiency. Chloe watched a toad hop slowly through a forest of begonias, and sipped her tea, and allowed herself to empty out.

Libby grilled zucchini and cherry tomatoes, and tossed them with cooked pasta shells and almonds and grated Romano cheese. To Chloe’s surprise, the food tasted good. “And a peach pie for later,” Libby added, setting a foil-covered pan on one side of the grill. She lowered the lid. “So. What did Roelke do?”

“He got called out to Old World to investigate a possible break-in, and he didn’t bother to tell me about it.” Chloe tipped her glass from side to side, watching ice cubes slide back and forth.

“Sounds like him. My cousin has a Galahad complex.”

“A gallant prince?” Chloe tried out that idea, measuring childhood fantasy men against Roelke’s reflective sunglasses and tightly clenched jaw.

“Nothing so romantic.” Libby poured herself a glass of wine. “His dad could be a mean SOB. He never beat Roelke, I don’t think, but he hit Roelke’s mother.”

“Oh.”

“The point is, nothing trips Roelke’s trigger like a woman in distress.”

“But I … I’m not in distress.”

“He told me about the break-in at your farmhouse. He thinks you’re vulnerable.”

“I don’t need him to protect me,” Chloe protested. “I don’t
want
him to protect me. I never asked for that.”

Libby dropped a napkin, pinned it with a toe, then bent to retrieve it. “I didn’t either, but it doesn’t keep him from trying.”

Chloe was silent.

“Let me tell you something else.” Libby hesitated, looking unsure for the first time. “Roelke’s not always so good at figuring out the emotional stuff. Sometimes I think … I think the protection instinct gets mistaken for something more.”

A breeze whispered in the trees above the patio. The whirring sound of a skateboard on the street out front drew close, then faded away.

“I don’t want anyone to get hurt. You, or him. Just be careful. That’s all I’m saying.”

“I will,” Chloe said, because it seemed easiest. She set down her glass of tea. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll switch to wine.”

“I’ve got plenty.” Libby poured a glass of Chablis, and handed it over. “So. You want to talk about the other guy?”

“What other guy?”

“The father of your child.”

Chloe’s response formed clearly in her head:
No! I do not want to talk about him!
But somehow what came out was, “I met Markus when he visited a historic site in Virginia where I used to work. Markus Meili. He was looking at hogs.”

Libby’s eyebrows raised. “Hogs?”

“Markus’ thing is the preservation of old livestock breeds. He works at a huge historic site in Switzerland. Ballenberg. A lot of agricultural sites, all over the world, are trying to save some of the old breeds from extinction. I was working at a site in Virginia with a healthy group of Ossabaws. That’s a rare hog breed from an island off the Georgia coast, originally brought hundreds of years ago from Spain.”

“Um … that’s interesting.”

Chloe tried to smile. “I thought so. Anyway, he was at my site for several days, and we … hit it off. Then we spent every evening of his first month back home on the telephone. I did the math and flew to Switzerland for a week.” She sipped her wine.

“Switzerland.” Libby considered that.

“Two months later Markus flew back to Virginia. He told me that he was in love with me over
pad
thai
in Alexandria. Not long after that, I quit my job and moved to Brienz.”

“Wow.”

Chloe watched a chipmunk beneath one of Libby’s bird feeders, stuffing its cheeks with sunflower seeds. “We lived together for five years. I began volunteering at Ballenberg. I eventually got hired to an education position.”

“You speak German?” Libby sounded impressed.

“
Suisse-Deutsch
. A little. I didn’t speak any when I went over, but most of the people I worked with spoke pretty good English.”

“That must have been hard.” Libby shook her head.

“Not at all. I
loved
Switzerland. Ballenberg is a wonderful historic site. And Brienz is lovely. I could walk to the market …” Chloe let her words trail away. Some of her best memories were simple ones: wandering up
Oberdorfstrasse
, a street lined with old chalets and window boxes of vibrant flowers. Sitting on a bench near a church while the sound of a rehearsing choir floated through an open window. Sipping white wine while Markus puttered in the kitchen, chattering about honeybees and Grison gray cattle …

Dammit
. She had to stop this. Markus had ended their relationship almost nine months earlier. Sure, she’d been hurt. Shocked. Stunned, even. But still
functional
. She’d done what she needed to do: packed her suitcases, come home, found a new job.

It was only months later that she’d realized, belatedly, that a sucking gray depression had crept up from behind. It had come so stealthily that she hadn’t realized she was losing herself until it was too late to stop the descent. And she hated being that depressed person. She hated not being able to scrub Markus from her mind. It felt as if some record album in her brain had one deep scratch, and the needle kept jumping back to a chorus she’d already heard
ad
nauseum
.

Libby regarded her. “Is there any reason you can’t stay here tonight?”

“I guess not, but—”

“Good. I think you should.”

By the time the neighbor dropped Justin and Dierdre off, Chloe was already cocooned in Libby’s guest bedroom. The small room was painted a cheerful purple. Photographs of the children lined the walls. Shelves overflowed with dog-eared paperbacks and storage tubs labeled “Sewing stuff” and “School papers—J” and “Photographs, 1981.” The room wasn’t haunted by memories of girlhood dreams, as Chloe’s bedroom in her parents’ house was. It wasn’t a sterile taunt of her failures, as the bedroom in her farmhouse was. It felt calm.

And she felt calm, too. Calmer, anyway. Chloe curled into bed, hearing the comforting murmur of Libby and her children as their evening unfolded. Very soon, for the first time in many months, Chloe fell deeply and soundly asleep.

____

Roelke sat at his kitchen table while Shirley Horn sang “You’d Be So Nice To Come Home To,” and the coffeepot burbled. It should have been a peaceful Sunday morning. It wasn’t.

“Well, hell,” he muttered. He shoved to his feet, instinctively ducking to avoid braining himself on the low sloping eaves, and restlessly prowled his apartment.

There wasn’t much to prowl. When he’d moved to Palmyra, all he’d wanted was a cheap place near Libby and the kids. This tiny flat had been available; he took it. He’d done the basics to make it feel like his own: pictures of the kids on the bookcase, a brontosaurus rex painting Justin had given him for Christmas on the wall, the last quilt his mother had made on his bed. He’d never thought of the flat as more than a temporary place to sleep. Besides, Libby’s place—a true home, with canned tomatoes in the basement and perennials in the gardens and inked lines on the kitchen door marking the kids’ heights at every birthday—was just a few blocks away.

Except that Libby’s house suddenly didn’t feel so welcoming. He wished that Libby could admit that once in a great while, she didn’t know everything about everyone.

He glared at a snapshot of his cousin. Maybe he
should
just move back to Milwaukee. Let Libby fix her own damn faucet. Get back in line for sergeant’s stripes.

See the kids once a month. Go to sleep wondering if their father was going to show up unannounced one night and break their mom’s arm.

The stereo switched off. Roelke replaced Shirley Horn with “Brilliant Corners” by the late, lamented Thelonious Monk. After setting the needle, Roelke slid back into his chair. He wanted to think about something else. Index cards were spread on the table before him, and he stared at his notes:

• May—OWW visitor asks about ale bowl with cow heads

• Sometime prior to June—page about ale bowl torn from OWW record book

• 6/5—Mrs. L. visits OWW to ask for bowl; car crash

• C. E. can’t find ale bowl

• 6/10—possible break-in at OWW storage trailers

• 6/12—attempted break-in at C. E.’s farmhouse

• 6/15—possible break-in at OWW/Kvaale house; evidence of possible foray upstairs; no sign of forced entry

Roelke sighed. The only concrete piece of evidence was the intruder at Chloe’s house, which might have nothing to do with the missing heirloom. Still, the list created an odd sequence of events. Something wasn’t right.

He was beating a fierce rhythm against the table with his thumb, trying to think, when the phone rang. “McKenna here.”

“Well gee, good morning to you too.” Libby’s voice was sardonic. “Still working on that pleasant greeting thing, I see.”

Her tone held no sign of “my-ex-is-being-an-ass” or “Justin-is-out-of-control.”

He frowned. “Why are you calling so early?”

“I want you to come over.”

Roelke leaned back in his chair. “Still working on that
asking
thing, I see. What’s going on?”

“Chloe’s here.”

Roelke sat back up straight. “And?”

“And you need to talk with her.”

He considered. “Does she know you’re calling me? Did she happen to mention that she’s royally pissed at me?”

“No and yes. And you know what? You both need to clear the air. You may never see her again, and that’s fine by me. But don’t leave things like this.”

“I haven’t even had coffee yet.”

“I’ve made coffee.”

“And I haven’t eaten.”

“I’m baking cinnamon rolls,” she said impatiently. “So stop making excuses and get your ass over here!”

____

Chloe could tell that Justin was in a sulky mood as soon as he emerged from the house. His sulks escalated into a tantrum thrown just as Roelke walked through the back gate. “I don’t
want
to be here!” the boy yelled. He hurled a plastic Smurf against the fence before stamping inside.

“I’ll get him,” Roelke offered, looking downright eager.

“No, I’ll get him,” Libby said firmly. “Sit. Drink coffee. Keep an eye on Dierdre.” Then she followed her son into the kitchen. Dierdre, wearing a Halloween princess costume, was playing on the grass with a turquoise toy pony.

“Good morning,” Chloe said. She hadn’t been thrilled to learn that Roelke was on his way over. But she was determined to be polite.

“Morning.” Roelke poured a cup of coffee from a carafe, stirred in some cream, and dropped into a chair. He wore his scuffed hiking boots, and he sat with one foot resting on its side and supporting the other. Those boots were once again oddly endearing.

“I’m sorry I was such a shrew on the phone,” she said. “But I hope you can see how disconcerting it was for me to find out by accident that you’d been called out to Kvaale the night before.”

“I would have thought there’d be a daily memo or something to share news like that.”

“Apparently there isn’t. And that’s not the point.”