Close to the Heel (10 page)

TEN

“Find what you're looking for this time?” I asked, even though I could see that she was lifting the journal out of my bag.

To her credit—well, sort of—she didn't try to hide it.

“What is this?” She held it up and looked at me the way a queen would look at some lowly subject she was about to order beheaded.

“What would your grandfather say if he found out you were snooping where you don't belong?”

“What would he say if he found out you betrayed his trust and told me about this journal?”

“We'll never know, because that's not going to happen. Hearing about your little thieving expedition, however…”

“He won't believe you.”

“You sound pretty sure of that,” I said. She looked sure too.

“My afi knows that
I
would never betray a trust,” she said.

She was nervy, I'll give her that. There she was, doing what she wasn't supposed to be doing and telling me that the old man would never believe it.

“You're a piece of work,” I said. “You act all sweet and innocent around your grandfather, and then you go behind his back and snoop into something when he's already made it clear he doesn't consider it any of your business.”

“And I suppose it's
your
business?” Her tone was one-hundred-percent pure distilled snottiness.

“Someone made it my business.” Oh. “That's what bugs you, isn't it? It's not about who it is. It's about me knowing something that you don't. It's driving you crazy.”

“If you say anything to my grandfather, I'll tell him that you told me. He'll never believe you. Never.”

Whatever, I told myself. This family's problems were not my problems.

So how come I was so angry? How come all I wanted to do was get even with her? How come that's exactly what I set out to do after she collected Johanna from her room and left—and after I watched them drive away?

I shoved the journal in the glove compartment of the Yaris and headed for the grocery store near the gas station. When I didn't see the woman who had accosted me on my second day in the country, I described her to the closest cashier.

“Oh,” said the brassy blond. “You must mean Freyja.”

“The same Freyja who's been trying to find her husband?”

“That's what they say. I don't know her very well. She's only been working here for a couple of weeks, and she keeps to herself. But someone said that her husband ran off with a co-worker or a lover or something and that Freyja hasn't been right in the head since.”

“Is she working today?”

She shook her head.

“Do you know where I can find her?”

“She rents a room from Halbjorn—he has the blue house at the end of town. I guess she would be there on her day off.”

Freyja was there, all right. She was coming around the side of the house with a calico cat in her arms.

“Excuse me,” I said, smiling in what I hoped was a non-threatening way. “Freyja?” It felt funny calling her by her first name, but when I'd asked the cashier for her last name, she'd said simply, “Her name is Freyja.” Brynja hadn't been kidding. People really did call each other by their first names.

Freyja froze when she saw me.

“Remember me from the gas station?” I said. “I was with Brynja. I'm Rennie.”

She looked over my shoulder as if she expected to see Brynja or maybe the cops. When they didn't appear, she still looked tense.

“I wanted to ask you about your husband,” I said.

“Baldur? You want to ask me about Baldur? Did someone send you? Is this a trick?”

“No one sent me.” I stepped closer and tried to pet the cat. It hissed at me. I backed off. “You asked me to talk to Brynja about him. Why? What do you think she knows?”

“She knows where he is. They both know.”

“So why won't they tell you?”

“Because they have hatred in their hearts, and it has turned them evil.”

I stared at her. She spoke calmly enough, but there was a bite to her voice. I wondered if Brynja was right: this woman was crazy.

The sky overhead was lead gray, and a whipping wind had come up since I'd left the house. I shivered inside my jacket.

“I don't understand,” I said.

“They think he killed Gudrun, and they think I know it.”

“Why do they think that?” I asked.

“I don't know. All I know is that he didn't do it. My Baldur would never kill anyone.”

“Mrs…uh…Freyja, I don't understand. Why would anyone think your husband killed Gudrun?”

“They blame him for what happened. After she died, he used to stand outside our house and shout that Baldur was a murderer.” He? Did she mean Einar? “He told everyone who would listen that Baldur killed his wife. He said he wasn't going to let Baldur get away with it. And Brynja—she…”

“She what?”

“Brynja was in the same class as my daughter. She made Rakel's life miserable until she couldn't stand it anymore. She's living with her aunt and uncle and going to school in Denmark. She says she never wants to come home again.”

I wondered why Freyja didn't leave as well. She would probably be a lot happier in Denmark than she was here.

“Why don't you tell me what happened?” I asked.

Her gold-brown eyes were rimmed with black smudges as if she hadn't slept well in days or even weeks.

“Do you really want to know?”

“I do.” I had nothing else going on, and I wanted to know whatever it was that Brynja refused to tell me.

Freyja stroked the cat. She started toward the house.

“Come in,” she said.

I followed her into a small but tidy house and up a narrow flight of stairs to a room at the back. It was filled with the morning sun and was larger than I expected. To one side, there was a small fridge, a few feet of counter, and both an electric kettle and an electric coffee pot. The smell of strong coffee filled the little room.

She asked me to sit. She opened a cupboard and took out a couple of cake tins. She sliced some cake from the first one. From the second, she produced some cookies, which she set on a plate with the cake. She set it on the coffee table in front of the small sofa, poured the coffee and asked me how I liked mine. She handed me my cup and settled into a chair opposite me.

“Baldur used to own a fishing boat,” she said. “A big one. Very modern. When things were going well a few years back, when the boom was on, he decided he wanted to try something different. It was so easy to get loans then, not like today. The banks were practically giving money away.”

A bank
giving
money away? She had to be kidding!

“What I mean to say is,” she continued, “that it was easy to get a loan and the interest rates were low. So Baldur took out a big loan and used his fishing quota as collateral. He used some of the money to improve the house and to get nice things for me and Rakel. But most of it he used for his big dream. He wanted to build a condominium resort for rich local people and wealthy tourists. It would have a beautiful setting, luxury accommodations, excellent restaurants, entertainment, a casino, all the amenities a person could wish for. It would bring jobs and money into the economy. He had people who were willing to invest in it. He was so happy.”

She passed me the plate of sweets and wasn't satisfied until I took a cookie. It was dense and buttery.

“They started to build the project—in the Westfjords. And then, just like that, the bubble burst. The economy collapsed. Baldur couldn't get the money he needed to finish the project. His investors had all gone broke. He couldn't repay his loan either, so he lost his fishing quota. We owed far more money than we could ever repay. Baldur was desperate, like so many people. But then a miracle happened, and he found some new investors. He thought everything was going to be okay. Then that woman came snooping around.”

“You mean Gudrun?”

“Yes. She was a reporter for one of the newspapers. She started out doing recipes and articles about raising children, that kind of thing. But she was ambitious. The more her husband wanted her to stay home and look after Brynja, the more she wanted to do something important.”

“Important?”

“That's what she used to say. She wanted to be the kind of reporter who breaks stories and grabs headlines. She got it into her head that Baldur was doing something wrong, and she started to follow him and pester him.”

“What did she think he was doing?”

“She claimed that he was in league with criminals.”

“What kind of criminals?”

“Russian criminals. She said that the people who invested in his project after the crash were financing it with money from drugs and human trafficking. She said they wanted to use the project, the casino especially, to launder money. She even claimed that they were going to use the place to transport drugs from here to other countries. Can you imagine anything so ridiculous? My Baldur would never get involved in anything like that.”

“Did she have any proof?”

“Not that I know of. Not that the newspaper ever printed. Not that it even hinted at. Her editor said that he knew she was working on something, but that he hadn't assigned it to her and that she didn't want to say what it was until she had the whole story. You see what she was like? She wanted to make a big splash. She wanted to make a name for herself. Instead, she fell at Barnafoss.”

“Barnafoss?”

“It's a waterfall not far from here. They found her in the water below. They say from the bruising, she either fell or jumped and then drowned. Then her husband started accusing my Baldur of murder.”

Clearly Einar didn't think she fell or jumped.

“What did the police say?”

“They investigated and said that it was inconclusive—that her death could have been accidental.”

“Could have been?”

“The manner of death was ruled as
Undetermined
. She drowned, that's all.”

“So why did Einar and Brynja think she was murdered?”

“Ah,” she said. She sounded like my history teacher whenever someone asked an unexpectedly relevant question. “At first, they thought it was an accident too. But Einar couldn't figure out what she was doing at the top of the waterfall. How had she fallen in? He didn't know what she was working on either—not until Brynja came up with her crazy stories.”

“Crazy stories?”

“Apparently she heard Gudrun talking to Baldur on several occasions. And it's true. Gudrun talked to him. Baldur never denied it. He said she was asking about the development and how it was going and whether it was true that some famous movie stars were thinking of buying some of the units—that kind of thing. She also found out that Baldur wasn't home that night. She said she knew her mother was working on a story about him and about the Russians he was working with. She's the one who started all the talk of murder.”

We were sliding back into the Kingdom of Krazy.

“Why would she do that?”

“Because she was jealous. Because after Baldur sold his fishing quota, he bought my Rakel all the best clothes and all the latest gadgets. Gudrun didn't make a lot of money as a reporter, and her father is a tour guide. It's seasonal work at best. Brynja did it to get back at Rakel.”

“Einar is convinced that your husband killed his wife because of something that Brynja said out of jealousy?”

Freyja looked deadly serious as she nodded. “She claims she heard her mother talking to someone before she left the house that night. She says her mother told whoever it was that she was going to confront Baldur with proof and that she was going to tape-record the conversation.”

“What kind of proof ?”

“I don't know. The police didn't find anything—no proof of anything, no tape recording, nothing like that.”

I took a sip of coffee. I'm no Sherlock Holmes, but it sure sounded to me like Einar and Brynja had a case. They knew Gudrun was going to meet someone that night. They knew it had to do with the story she was working on. And they knew, because of what Brynja had heard, that Gudrun was going to try to get something incriminating out of Baldur. If I'd been playing ball with the Russian mob, or whatever, and someone was going to expose me, I know what I would have been tempted to do.

“Maybe she met someone there,” Freyja said. “Maybe that person really did push her and that's why she died. But it wasn't Baldur. He would never do anything like that.”

I hated to ask, but I had to. “Do you know where your husband was that night?”

She didn't try to avoid my eyes when she answered. “No. But when he came home late, everything was normal. I was married to him for nineteen years. Do you think I wouldn't know if my husband had killed someone? Do you think I wouldn't notice that something was wrong?”

I had no idea.