Heritage of Darkness (21 page)

structures propped up on tall stacks of stones—suggesting the

construction techniques used in the deep fjord landscape of rural

Norway.

Vesterheim’s staff and volunteers really had created something

very special, Chloe thought. She was starting to feel protective

about the museum.

In the storage building, the first thing Chloe saw was a collec-

tion of painted immigrant trunks. She flashed on the memory of

Petra Lekstrom, dumped inside just such a trunk . Petra might

have been a hound dog’s mama, but
nobody
deserved that. Evi-174

dently, Chloe thought, I am starting to take the murder personally, too.

She took a few deep breaths and purposefully walked down the

center aisle. Nothing was more fun than poking around another

institution’s collections facility. On either side, rows of metal

shelving held artifacts neatly arranged on acid-free paper. “Ooh,”

she breathed, spotting a particularly splendid Hardangar fiddle.

Unfortunately, Emil and his students arrived before she could

wander too far. Roelke surprised her with a wolfish eyebrow-wig-

gle that made the backs of her knees tingle. Other parts of her too, actually. Was Roelke as frustrated by this week’s boarding school

arrangement as she was? Or were her own frustrations causing her

to —

“Miss Ellefson?” Emil asked politely. Chloe realized that it was

not the first time the carver had spoken her name. “The artifacts I want to show my students are on shelf 7B.” He pointed.

As Howard had promised, her presence was merely a safeguard

against any possible criticism of museum policy. Emil donned a

pair of white cotton gloves before affectionately stroking a por-

ridge container. “Of all the Norwegian folk arts,” he began softly,

“wood carving has been the most consistently practiced by immi-

grants and their descendants.”

Chloe noticed that Roelke wasn’t tossing furtive glances her

way anymore. He looked like he wanted to stroke the porridge

container too.

“Norwegian-American carvers have always created beautiful

and useful pieces,” Emil said with obvious pride. “Rosemaling gets more attention, but people forget that painting almost died out

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completely before being revived fifty years ago. Woodcarving is the most true expression of Norwegian heritage.”

Whack!
Chloe thought. She wondered what Mom would think

of Emil’s claim. The question conjured an interesting mental

image of Marit and Emil duking it out—in cotton gloves, of

course.

Emil put the porridge container down and gestured toward a

rectangular box. “This example dates to 1754. See how the rosettes are combined with bands and fan shapes? Each section is perfectly

balanced. The overall design is perfectly balanced.”

Some students made hasty sketches in their notebooks. Roelke

leaned close to study the artifact with his own brand of intensity.

Chloe felt that tingle again.

“How come the wood surface looks black?” one of the students

asked.

“The surface was stained black before carving, so the design

stands out,” Emil explained. “In rural Norway, everyone under-

stood that life is a balance of good and evil, darkness and light.”

He moved farther down the aisle. “See the similar positive and

negative effect in this chip carved mangle from 1820? Even this

symbol of romantic love contains both light and shadows.”

Yeah, Chloe thought. All parties understood that in a system

that embraced traditional gender roles, romantic love could

quickly become a drudgery of household chores.

When Emil picked up a second mangle, she wandered across

the aisle to another bank of shelves—which contained a collection

of wedding spoons. Geez Louise, had her mother arranged storage

so that all matrimonial artifacts were glaringly prominent?

Enough with the mangles and love spoons, already!

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Behind the spoons were several
primstavs
, similar to the one she and Roelke had seen in the museum. Ironic, Chloe thought,

that this particular shelf included love spoons symbolizing joyful beginnings and the calendar sticks that so often included symbols

of Christian martyrs’ tortured deaths. Each stick had its own style.

One had been painted black, so the simple carved marks and pic-

tographs depicting the calendar were barely distinct. Its neighbor had been carved from a pale wood. Darkness and light, Chloe

thought. She stepped closer … and felt a vague wave of discomfort

that quickened her breath and tensed her muscles. It was hard to

define, but
something
in that aisle was giving off a bad vibe.

Without moving, she studied the shelves. Small pieces were

arrayed above and below the calendar sticks—darning eggs, pastry

cutters, a child’s donut-shaped teething ring. The ring raised all kinds of scarlet flags in her psyche … an old loss of her own, her mother’s not-so-subtle attempts to steer her and Roelke toward

marriage and family, her muddled feelings on both issues.

She glanced over her shoulder. Emil had moved on from the

mangle and was now analyzing a carved footstool. I am outta here,

Chloe thought, retracing her steps. Her perceptive gifts seemed to be evolving, and the notion that individual artifacts in a museum

collection might reach out to flick her senses was not welcome.

Her job had enough challenges without that sweet little extra.

She met the others in the central aisle. “Thank you, Miss Ellef-

son,” Emil said. “We’re finished.” As the carvers filed out Roelke gave her a distracted nod. So much for romance.

Alone again, Chloe took one last look behind her.
Something

back there had carried some melancholy through the years.
Was
it 177

the teething ring? Was she starting to project her own dreams and

doubts—

“No,”
she said, and abruptly turned her back. Like she didn’t already have enough to worry about? She was not actually responsible for anything in this room. Hallelujah.

Chloe closed the door behind her, turned the key in the lock,

and headed back to class.

178

nineteen

Chloe finished the afternoon without finishing her tray. So

be it, she thought. I’ve got a date. When she spotted Roelke waiting in the student lounge, her heart did a happy dance that Snoopy

would envy.

“Since the lady I’m interviewing tonight lives out of town,

Mom loaned me her car,” she announced, dangling a key ring

enticingly. “We are on the lam.”

Roelke looked perplexed. “‘On the lam’ means ‘on the run,’” he

said. “So unless you’re fleeing the mob, or Investigator Buzzelli has drawn a really bizarre conclusion, we aren’t really—”

“Yeah, yeah.” She grabbed his hand. “Let’s go.”

They emerged from the building into a deep blue twilight.

“Temp’s dropping,” Roelke said, tugging the zipper of his parka

higher.

“It’s going to be clear tonight,” Chloe agreed, gazing skyward.

No clouds, no snow, no heat bubble.

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“Emil’s still helping someone in the classroom,” Roelke said,

“but I’m sure it would be fine if we stopped by his place.”

“How far is it? Can we walk? I like the idea of zooming off in

Mom’s car, but honestly, I’ve been cooped up inside way too much

this week.”

“Sure, if you want. It’s less than two miles from here.”

They set off at a brisk pace, moving from pool to pool of light

below streetlamps. “So,” he said. “At lunchtime I told Buzzelli

about the message-thing Hoff got last summer. Buzzelli will follow up with him.”

“Lovely.” Chloe pictured Howard’s reaction when Investigator

Buzzelli came calling to discuss his relationship with Petra. Well, she simply couldn’t help that.

They soon reached the river’s landscape of drifted snow and

frozen water, with steep wooded bluffs beyond, all in shades of

black, gray, purple. “Cool bridge,” Chloe said, pausing to admire

the geometry of the twin sets of trusses.

“Yeah,” Roelke said. “All those angles remind me of carving

designs. Is it like that for you? Are you starting to think about

painting even when you’re not in class?”

“Nope,” Chloe said, but it didn’t matter because her spirits

were rising. “I’m glad we decided to walk. I think turpentine fumes were getting to me.”

Once across the bridge they walked along the road in the nar-

row space cleared by snowplow. Roelke positioned himself

between her and any oncoming traffic. Since seeing her beau/gen-

tleman caller/young man struck by a car wouldn’t be any less trau-

matic than getting struck herself, Chloe started to protest his

gallantry. Instead, she tucked one hand through the crook of his

180

arm. “Hey, Roelke? It was nice of you to come along with Mom

and me this week. Even if you had no idea what you were getting

into.”

“I was naïve,” he admitted. “But I’m glad I tagged along.”

She was too. This challenging week would have been much

more
challenging without him.

“So,” she said, “I want to run some ideas past you. Whoever

attacked Petra was angry at her. Whoever left that threat for How-

ard last summer was angry at him. I spent some time over the

lunch break trying to figure out how those things might be con-

nected.”

“Shoot.”

She talked. He listened as she listed her ideas about motivation

for Petra’s attack: anger about Vesterheim’s debt, a furtive drive to prevent Vesterheim from being reaccredited, desire to re-engage

Luther College, etc, etc.

“The rosemaling competition might connect the threat against

Howard and Petra’s death,” he said. “But how likely is it that someone killed her to get back at Howard for taking on a big restora-

tion project, or in hopes of making Vesterheim look bad? Money is

always a prime motivator to consider, but if that’s it, I don’t understand Lekstrom’s role.”

Chloe exhaled slowly. “Well … I don’t either. I’m probably way

off base.”

“It’s good to air out any ideas,” he assured her. “You never know

where they might lead.”

Five minutes later they rounded a bend that revealed a pretty

little farm sleeping quietly in the rising moon’s pale light. “That’s Emil’s place,” Roelke told her.

181

“It’s lovely. And—Emil has a
stabbur!”
She pointed to the small storage building perched on posts, a rare remnant of vernacular

architecture.

“This place has been in his family since they came over from

Norway,” Roelke said.

She squinted. “He’s put out a sheaf of grain for the birds. How

charming.” That was one of her favorite traditions from the Nor-

ske canon.

“Chloe, do you have a favorite tree?”

She blinked—where the heck had
that
come from? “Do I have

to pick just one? Walnut, maybe—I love the nuts
and
the wood.

Sugar maples for color in the fall and syrup in the spring. And

oaks just because they are amazing. I love the way they look in the oak-savannah prairie landscape—”

“Yeah, OK,” he said. Evidently she was telling him more than

he wanted to know.

She studied him. “So … why did you ask?”

He waved one arm toward the wooded slope across the road.

“Emil’s land stretches part-way up that hill. Last night he walked me up there and gave me what-for about needing to learn more

about trees. You two probably could have had quite the conversa-

tion.”

Roelke didn’t sound annoyed by that, just a bit wistful. “Well,

let’s go up there!” she suggested.

“Now?”

“Why not? I’m tired of crouching on a chair the size of a post-

age stamp, squinting at chalk lines on a tray that I’m never going to finish painting.”

“Are your chairs really too small? Ours are quite comfortable.”

182

“Our chairs are fine, Roelke. That’s not the point. I just—I

just …” Chloe decided against an explanation. Her buddy Ethan

would understand that in the middle of this stressful week, being

around trees would do her a whole lot of good. She wasn’t sure if

Roelke would get that or not.

Evidently he either got it or was at least willing to follow her

lead. “Sure, we can do that.”

They walked up the hill in silence, aiming for the footprints left from the evening before. Chloe’s lungs began to burn pleasantly

with the exertion. They paused when the service lane ended. Stars

were appearing in the evening sky. Leafless tree limbs whispered in the wind.

“Roelke?” Chloe heard herself say. “Maybe we should just go

home to Wisconsin.”

“Seriously?”

“Well, yeah. My rosemaling class is a disaster. We could just …

you know. Leave.”

“I promised the chief I’d keep my eyes and ears open all week.

And don’t you have more interviews to do for the folklore proj-

ect?”

“Just the one tonight.”

He was silent. A car passed on the road below them, its head-

lights carving the night like twin spotlights before disappearing

around the bend. “I don’t want to leave now,” he said at last. “I

want to finish my class. I might never have another opportunity to study from a master carver.”

Chloe remembered how content he’d looked when she’d

watched him carving the day before. How absorbed he’d been,