Bonereapers (17 page)

Chapter Twenty-two

The lobby was jammed. A knot of people stood in a ragged line in front of the reception desk, waiting to check in. They were laughing and gabbing with one another and futzing with their hotel-issue clogs. Their suitcases and duffel bags lay scattered carelessly across the floor, making walking a hazard. Dinah asked a woman in a fur hat near the back of the line where they’d come from.

“London. We’ve flown in for New Year’s Eve.”

“The airport is open?”

“I should jolly well hope so by now. We thought we’d have to camp out in Heathrow through the holiday and lose our hotel deposit, but it’s all come right. The party’s already begun.”

This was evidenced by a well-irrigated gentleman in a Dickens top hat and green felt vest passing up and down the line pouring gin into outstretched plastic cups.

Dinah maneuvered her way through the crowd to the elevators and pushed the up button. The relief in Thor’s voice when he said, “They’ve found her” could mean only one thing. They’d found Erika and she was alive. Maybe she’d tried to book a commercial flight at the airport or, as Lee suggested, gone overland by dogsled to Barentsburg. Dinah hoped that Norris Frye was wrong about Erika being a murderess, although at this point she wouldn’t bet on the innocence of anyone.

“I hear you’re the one who found the lawyer’s body.”

She jumped. “Brander, you frightened me.”

“Stabbed? Strangled? What was she wearing?”

“I’m not going to give you that information.”

“I didn’t really think you would, but I’ve got another story. Get your coat and I’ll show you something.”

“I’m not going anywhere. You shouldn’t either. They’ve found Erika.” She put on the brakes. “Did you know…?”

“Everybody knows. I’ve already wired the story to
Dagbladet
.”

“Well, then, you should lurk about here in the lobby until they bring her back. Maybe she’ll give you an exclusive.”

Brander grinned. “They only think they’ve found her.” The elevator door opened. He propelled Dinah inside, walked in behind her, and pushed the button for the second floor.

“What do you mean they only think they’ve found her?”

“Somebody gave them a, what do you Americans call it? A bum steer.”

“How do you know that?”

“As I told you once before, it’s my business to know things.”

“Did you call in a phony tip?”

He winked a naughty-boy wink.

“Thor Ramberg will nail your hide to the jailhouse wall.”

“He doesn’t know where the tip came from and he won’t unless you tell him.”

The elevator stopped. They got out and he propelled her toward her room. “You’re in two-eighteen, right?”

“Why,” she asked, “would you do something so perverse? And illegal?”

“I needed to pry you loose for a while.”

“Well, you can’t. I’m going to lock myself in my room until the police call me to be interviewed.”

“They’ve gone to Barentsburg. They’ll be gone for hours. Let’s go in your room and I’ll explain.”

“You’re not setting a foot inside my room.” She noticed that he hadn’t removed his boots. “Anything you have to say to me, you can say it right here in the hall.”

“I think I know where Erika is. All I want is a chance to speak with her before the police and her husband get to her and she’s never seen or heard from again.”

“How could you know where she is?”

“I don’t
know
. I
think
I know. Fata Morgana once put on a Christmas concert in Longyearbyen. It was televised—lots of glitz and glamor with the northern lights as a backdrop. The group stayed at an old Victorian hotel on the peninsula by Adventifjorden, not far from the airport. The coal baron John Longyear and his cronies used to host parties there during the summer. The hotel is dilapidated now, but maybe Erika holds fond memories. It’s worth a try.”

“Brander, if you think that’s where she is, why don’t you go and speak to her by yourself? Why do you need me?”

“She might open the door to you.”

Dinah weighed the pros and cons. In the pro column, she could verify that Erika was safe and had eloped of her own free will. On the con side, Thor and everybody else would assume she’d known where Erika was from the get-go and had lied about it. She could be jailed for obstructing a police investigation or worse, participating in Erika’s kidnapping. But on the pro side, Erika could solve the mystery of the stolen note left in Maks’ room and perhaps shed light on Eftevang’s murder. A major con, Erika and Maks could turn out to be the murderers and they wouldn’t take kindly to being tracked to their lair by a sleazy journalist and the Nosy Parker who’d ruined her parka and read her mail.

Aagaard frisked himself, apparently searching for his cigarettes. “Will you come?”

“How do I know you didn’t kill Eftevang and Valerie, too? How do I know you didn’t shoot me and now you’re trying to entice me out of the hotel to finish the job?”

He looked at her bandaged arm as if it had suddenly dropped out of the sky. “When did that happen?”

“Yesterday.” In fact, she hardly knew what time it was any more. It had been one long, continuous night since the moment she landed at Svalbard. “I take it that’s your denial?”

“I didn’t shoot you. I didn’t kill anybody.” He found a cigarette and lit up in defiance of hotel rules, city ordinance, and national policy. “I won’t say a homicide doesn’t make great copy because it does and, save for that monster who slaughtered all those teenage children of the Labor Party last year, there are damn few homicides in Norway to write about. But I like to skewer my victims alive. In forty point bold.”

He was insufferable, but plausible. And no one had ever accused her of an excess of caution. She said, “I’ll get my coat.”

She left him in the hallway and went into her room. Erika’s parka was still in Thor’s trunk or being analyzed in a lab somewhere, so it was the flimsy wool pea jacket or nothing. She swaddled herself in every piece of clothing she had and topped it with the pea jacket. In a nod to prudence, she dashed off a note to Thor. “Have gone to the old hotel on Adventifjorden with Aagaard. He thinks Erika may be hiding out there. Dinah.”

Thor’s refusal to face her and talk to her rankled. It didn’t matter that it was the professional thing to do or that she would do the same thing if she were the one wearing the badge. She had handled the dumbbell that brained Valerie and it was perfectly rational to chuck her into the pool of suspects. But Dinah didn’t feel especially rational. A kiss like the one the detective inspector had laid on her made rationality moot. She tore up the note and tossed it in the waste basket.

Aagaard was waiting for her, stinking up the hall with his cigarette smoke. She stared at the torn pieces of the note as if she could divine her fortune from the pattern of the pieces. Whatever the immediate future spelled, it was lame to let punctured vanity keep her from taking a simple precaution. She rewrote the note and propped it on the dresser.

She and Aagaard rode the elevator down to the lobby and threaded their way through the festive crowd. In the foyer, she pulled on her boots, snugged her cap down tight, put on her mittens, and followed Aagaard into the wild black yonder. The temperature had dropped since her last outing and the wind had picked up. The tassels on her ski cap thrashed about her face like angry snakes and she had to hold them out of her eyes. “How far is the car?” she asked.

“What?”

“The car. How far?”

Aagaard turned down a dark side street and pulled a flashlight out of his jacket. The wind changed, now hitting her in the face. Her eyes felt gelid and her nose began to run, wetting the balaclava. She began to obsess about frostbite—the ice crystals forming inside her tissues, the cells dying, her nose turning black, the doctor breaking the news he’d have to amputate.

“Is the car on this street?”

Aagaard stopped and the flashlight beam homed in on a two-man snowmobile. “Climb in the back.”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“It’s only a mile beyond the airport.”

“We’re two blocks from the hotel and I’m already numb.”

“You can rest your head against my back to break the wind. We’ll be there in five minutes. There won’t be any hikers or skiers tonight. We’ll take the Burma Road.”

“Burma Road?”

“Nordic humor.” He pulled two pairs of goggles out of the glovebox, strapped one around his head, and handed the other to her. “You’ll need these.”

Like an utter idiot, like the ditzy heroine in some had-I-but-known melodrama, she put on the goggles and climbed into the back seat. Who was it who said that bad decisions make good stories? Somebody whose bad decision hadn’t included a snowmobile ride over the Burma Road on a sub-zero evening in December with a man she didn’t trust. Somebody who lived to tell.

“Do you know how to operate one of these contraptions?”

“Is the Pope Catholic?”

Aagaard folded his lanky legs into the front seat, turned the ignition, and off they roared. Dinah huddled low and buried her face in the fabric of his coat. It stank of stale smoke, but it shielded her from the wind and the worst of the exhaust fumes. A mini-blizzard kicked up by the sled’s track threw snow onto her back and the noise of the engine cut through her senses like a band saw. Every now and then she raised her head and tried to get her bearings, but there was nothing to see except for the twin headlights of the snowmobile hurtling into a black, featureless infinity.

Her butt bumped up and down like a paddle ball and she clenched her teeth to keep from yelping. Her goggles fogged up. Perspiration? How could she possibly be perspiring? And if she were perspiring, the next thing would be hypothermia.

Aagaard leaned hard to the left, swerved off the road, and jumped the machine across what must have been a drift. Dinah flew up in the air and landed hard on her butt. The engine sputtered and coughed. What if this machine broke down out here? How long could she last in this cold, in this pea jacket with its chichi red buttons? She saw her fate flash before her eyes. She saw her brother, laughing uproariously at her stupidity. She saw her mother placing a wreath atop her headstone.
Here lies Dinah Pelerin. She should have stayed in South Georgia
.

The engine and the lights of the airport tower came into view. Aagaard made a wide arc to the left of the airport and continued into the darkness. The snow deepened. Somewhere off to her right, hungry polar bears foraged for meat on the ice floes of Adventifjorden.

She shouted, “I thought you said we’d be there in five minutes.”

“What?”

The wind whipped her tassels across her face and she lowered her head and pressed her face into his coat again. It had been longer than five minutes. Way longer. She counted off another sixty seconds. If Aagaard didn’t stop in another minute, she would have to assume the worst. Having a Plan B would be oh-so-comforting at a time like this. She scoured her brain pan for options. Flight across this snow-covered waste wasn’t one of them. If her left arm didn’t hurt so much, she could yank Aagaard’s goggles down around his neck and garrote him with the straps. She could take off her ski cap and garrote him with the tassels. She could try to cold-cock him with one of her boots, but it wouldn’t be likely to achieve the desired result. A blow to the driver’s head at this speed and this snow buggy would flip and kill them both. She thought how she would explain her bad decision to Sergeant Lyby in the event she survived. If she weren’t so cold and so scared, she would have laughed.

Aagaard cruised to a juddering stop. “That’s it.”

Dinah took off the goggles and, in the harsh beam of the headlights, beheld the decaying hulk of an old, three-story hotel worthy of a Halloween horror flick. Its lopsided contours were in monochrome, slate gray to battleship gray to oyster gray. Even the snow leading up to it looked gray. She saw no tracks, but there had been intermittent, blowing snow during the day. The windows had been boarded up, but a sliver of light showed under the front door. Somebody was at home. Dinah couldn’t see the pampered wife of a U.S. senator in such a place. It seemed more likely that some down-and-out squatters had moved in.

Aagaard pulled something out a dark bag and unwrapped it. His camera.

Dinah felt a wave of revulsion. “You’re going to ambush her?”

“What did you think I’d do? She’s not going to pose for me now, is she?”

“Maybe Maks Jorgen will open the door and sock you in the nose. Anyway, I thought you wanted a story. You snap a picture and that’s it. You won’t get anything else and you know it.”

“
Skitt
.” He took off his goggles, turned around in his seat, and lifted his ski mask. “What do
you
want from her?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe all I want is to give her my blessing. What I won’t do is help you embarrass her, or her husband.”

Aagaard hopped out of the sled into hip-high snow. “I’ll forget about the photo. We have plenty of those on file at the paper. But I want to know why she’s here with Jorgen and what she knows about Fritjoe Eftevang’s murder. She’ll have to tell Ramberg sooner or later and anything I write about the murder will have to be cleared with him before it goes to print. This isn’t an ambush, it’s a rehearsal. Anyway, Erika’s no babe in the woods. She’s been grist for the media mill in Europe since before you were born.” He cut the engine. The headlights went off and he turned on his flashlight. “I’ll plow a path to the door. You can follow and I’ll let you ring the bell.”

Chapter Twenty-three

The porch had disintegrated into a pile of rotten wood covered in snow. There were no steps leading up to the door, but someone had stacked a few cinder blocks in stair steps alongside the rubble and they had been swept clean of snow. Aagaard climbed up and held his hand out to give Dinah a boost, shining his light on each step. The substitute cinder-block stoop was small and she balanced on the edge to keep from touching Aagaard.

If there had ever been a bell, it had long since ceased to function and there was no knocker. Dinah thumped her mittened hand against the door, knowing it wasn’t necessary. You can’t sneak up on somebody in a snowmobile. Whoever was inside knew they had company.

Aagaard held his light on the door and they waited.

She said, “What if they don’t answer? We can’t make them.”

“They know we can send somebody who can.”

The door screaked open and the white-bearded man from the library loomed over them. Dinah had forgotten how large he was. Tonight he didn’t look so much startled as resentful.

“What do you want?”

“You’re Maks Jorgen,” said Aagaard. “I recognize you.”

“You’re not welcome,” said Maks. The ‘you’ was clearly a plural.

Dinah feigned an audacity she didn’t feel. “My name is Dinah Pelerin. I’d like to speak with Erika if she’s here.”

“She’s not.”

Erika called from inside. “Let them in, Maks.” Her voice sounded resigned. “It was only a matter of time.”

Maks cast a look behind him and returned surly eyes to Aagaard. “Both?”

“Of course. They must be numb to the knees. They’ll want the fire and a cup of hot tea.”

Maks moved aside and Dinah and Aagaard entered the ruined hall of what must have been the finest hostelry in the Arctic once upon a time.

“This way,” said Maks.

He walked ahead of them across a sloping floor into a large room, thick with the oily smell of coal smoke. Heat from an old-timey pot-bellied coal stove poured into the room and the light from a pair of lanterns on either end of the mantel imparted a spectral haze.

“Is that thing safe?” asked Aagaard, inspecting the flue.

Maks and Erika ignored him. Erika sat cross-legged on the floor next to a portable CD player. A bottle and a half-full glass of red wine sat within easy reach. Her hair hid her face and she bobbed her head in time to an old Joni Mitchell song about love’s illusions.

“There are no chairs,” said Maks.

Dinah sat down on the floor beside Erika and hugged her knees. “I’d like to help you, Erika. Senator Sher…Colt opened up to me about your…” she glanced up at Aagaard…“your troubles.”

Erika wasn’t so into her cups she didn’t take the hint. “Maks, dear, why don’t you take Dinah’s friend into the kitchen and give him a warm schnapps.”

“No thanks,” said Aagaard, sitting on the floor next to Dinah. “I’ll stay.”

Erika shook her hair out of her face and studied him. “Weren’t you the reporter who questioned my husband at the press conference?”

“That’s right. Brander Aagaard.”

“I’ve seen you somewhere else.”

“Years ago. At a concert maybe. Today I’ve come to ask you about your husband’s relationship with Tillcorp and Valerie Ives. With her murder…”

“Valerie murdered?” She looked at Dinah.

“I found her body this morning, Erika. She’d been bludgeoned and her body hidden away in the sauna.”

Erika put a hand to her mouth.

Aagaard pounced. “The police found a printout of an e-mail your husband wrote to her in Jorgen’s room. Did you leave it there on purpose? Did you see Sheridan with Eftevang the night he was killed?”

Erika pushed herself to her feet and backed away from him.

“
Tosk
.” Maks spat out the word and dragged Aagaard to his feet.

“No, please.” Erika combed her hair out of her face and seemed to gather herself. “Maks, would you take Mr. Aagaard into the kitchen and show him that box of our old album covers you found? He was one of our fans. I’m sure it will bring back memories.”

Maks gripped Aagaard’s arm, hoisted him to his feet, and shoved him toward the hall. “Don’t give me an excuse to hurt you.”

Irrepressible, Aagaard continued to reel off questions. “Will she file for divorce? How long have the two of you been planning this? What has she told you about Sheridan and…?”

“Shut up!”

Their voices receded down the hallway and Erika bent and picked up her glass of wine. “Would you care for wine? I’ll have Maks bring another glass.”

“No thanks.”

She gestured toward a kettle on the stove. “There’s hot water. I’m afraid you’ll have to go to the kitchen for teabags.”

“A cup of hot water would be appreciated.”

“A cup of…” She threw a cursory glance around the floor. “It appears a cup will also require a trip to the kitchen.”

“Nevermind, Erika. The warmth from the stove is all I want.”

“I expect Colt will be bereft without Valerie. She was his mainstay.” She leaned one shoulder against the peeling wall and assumed an air of casual aplomb, as if this were just another gossipy Washington cocktail party.

“He didn’t requite Valerie’s affections, Erika. He seems to be more bereft without you.”

“What did he tell you about me?”

“He’s afraid you think he murdered Fritjoe Eftevang.”

“Why on earth would he think that?”

“Because of the e-mail Valerie showed you, the one Aagaard was talking about. Either Colt or someone pretending to be Colt sent a message to Valerie saying he meant to take care of the Eftevang problem.”

“I’ve never seen it. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Dinah tried to reconcile the testimony. If Sheridan was telling the truth, somebody else had written the e-mail. If Valerie had told the truth, somebody had stolen it from her files. And if Erika was telling the truth, she didn’t write it, steal it, or plant it. “Is that the truth, Erika?”

“Largely.” She tossed her hair. “As much as you or anyone else is entitled to.”

Dinah didn’t like being talked down to. She stood up and locked eyes with her. “We’re talking about two murders, Erika, and your husband has become the number one suspect.”

She dropped her chin and her hair closed around her face like a curtain.

Dinah said, “Tell me when and how you left the hotel.”

“I met Maks at the cinema the night that man was stabbed. Maks told me the number of the room he’d rented at the Radisson. The next night, he kept watch and when Lee left his post, Maks came and told me and I sneaked out and went to his room. We were there just long enough for me to change into outside clothes. He had bought me another pair of boots so Colt wouldn’t notice that mine were missing from the rack in the foyer. I borrowed Colt’s anorak.”

“Did you let anyone into that room or leave the door open when you left?”

“No.” She took a defiant sip of wine. “I suppose Colt told you that I’m an alcoholic.”

“Valerie did. She said you’d been in rehab. Senator…Colt said that you began drinking because you were grieving for a child you lost. A child he asked you to abort.”

“My goodness! He
is
morose if he’s told you that.”

“He says that you blame him.”

“I did blame him. I don’t anymore.”

The music segued into a rock number with a driving beat. “
You can go your own way
.” Erika turned up the volume.

Her elusiveness might charm the daylights out of her male admirers, but Dinah wasn’t having any. She turned off the CD. “I don’t think you went through with the abortion. I think you had the baby and you’re here in Norway to look for a living daughter named Hannalore. I think you called upon your old friend Maks to help you find her.”

“That’s perceptive of you. Unfortunately, any child of Colt’s, whether living or dead, would be a setback to his political…what? His political persona.” She sank the last of her wine and poured another glass.

“I don’t think he’s proud of what he asked you to do. Or of his hypocrisy. He seems genuinely remorseful.”

She wobbled slightly, held onto the wall to keep from falling, and flipped her hair out of her face. “We are all remorseful. We are all sick with remorse.” Her tone was caustic. If she had swallowed the camel once, it had become indigestible.

“Is giving up your baby the reason Inge told you to pray for forgiveness?”

“How do you…?” She smiled. “Ah. You found her letter.”

“Did you give Hannalore to Inge?”

“She didn’t let me hold the baby when she was born. No touching. No bonding. No naming. I’d made up my mind. Colt came first. I was to leave the baby with her and go back to him. She would put the baby up for adoption after I went back to the States.”

“And did she?”

“Yes. I begged her to give me the names, the place, anything at all. But she won’t tell me. Maks went to see her and she gave him that note for me. He’s contacted the hospital, all the agencies, but the records are sealed. I don’t even know if my daughter is in Norway.” She slid down the wall until her backside bumped the floor. “I loved Colt. I wanted to do what he wanted. I made a decision. But I don’t know. If I’d held her, I might have changed my mind.”

Dinah knelt down beside her and squeezed her hand. Bad decisions made interesting stories, but not many happy endings. “You must have stayed in Norway longer than Colt expected. What did you tell him?”

“Medical complications, a slow recovery. Colt has always thought of me as fragile.” She gave an acrid laugh. “It’s too funny.”

“Didn’t he fly over to make sure you were all right?”

“He offered, of course. But I could hear the reluctance in his voice. He was campaigning for a seat in the Montana House, shaking the hand of every person in the state, kissing all of their babies. I told him not to come, that I was recuperating at my grandmother’s farm.”

There weren’t many times when the subject of murder was less painful than the alternative, but Dinah deemed this to be one of them. “Erika, what do you know about Fritjoe Eftevang? You seemed so upset when you first heard about the murder. Did you see something that frightened you?”

“I saw the corruption of my husband’s soul.”

“What do you mean? Did Colt kill him?”

“Not directly. I don’t think he knew what was in store for the poor man, but he would have done nothing to stop it if he had. You see, Colt belongs to Jake Mahler now. Like Whitney. Like Val. They dance to Mahler’s tune. I knew the instant I heard what had happened that Mahler was behind it. He’s like a cancer.” She bowed her head and covered her face with both hands. “I tried to get through to Colt. I wanted him understand why I had to get away. He wouldn’t listen. He shut me away in that room and he wouldn’t talk to me. Once again, politics took precedence over everything. Over his wife. Over his conscience, too.”

Dinah wasn’t entitled to an answer, but she couldn’t resist asking. “Aagaard said that Maks was in love with you. Will you go back to him now?”

“Why not? If you believe Inge, I’ve already ruined his life. Inge would call herself an objective moralist, but she’s the worst kind of romantic. She’s always looking for a villain to blame. She underestimates the hero’s willingness to ruin his own life, often for something that was never real.” She laughed. “Of course the same is true for the heroine.”

Maks reappeared in the doorway. “Rika? What do you want me to do? That
tosk
is threatening to have us arrested for false imprisonment. I can’t keep him shut up in the pantry for much longer.”

Dinah said, “Inspector Ramberg has gone to Barentsburg to search for you, Erika. Even if you don’t go back to the States with Colt and the others, you’ll have to talk to the police.”

“You’re quite right.” She stood up and dusted herself off. Her voice was suddenly cool and assured, the voice of a senator’s wife, unfazed by wine. She wrapped a thick rag around her hand, lifted the lid on the stove by its cast-iron handle, and added a few chunks of coal from a metal bucket. “Invite Mr. Aagaard to come in and join us by the fire, Maks. He must have a cell phone. He can call the police for us and we can sing a few of our golden oldies for him while we wait for them to arrive. I’m sure that Dinah would rather return to town in a police car than a snøscooter.”