Heritage of Darkness (27 page)

here. Most of these pieces came from Norway. Look at the sun

motifs on that tankard! I think that’s where Vesterheim’s logo

comes from.”

“Un-hunh.”

“And
geez
, that’s magnificent.” She pointed at a massive cupboard painted with Biblical scenes. Ornate woodwork panels

added to the overall artistry. “Look at the carving.”

“It’s great,” Roelke said, “but it’s
acanthus
carving.”

226

Chloe interpreted that observation as
What it’s
not
is
chip carving, which is what
I’m
interested in, and by the way class has no
doubt started again and I really want to get back.

“Just a sec,” she promised, skimming the interpretive label.

“This says that someone once covered all the religious scenes with black paint. Whoever would have …?”

But even as she speculated, she flashed on an image of Edwina

Ree speaking softly of
mørkemakten.
The power of darkness.

Which, Chloe thought, is evidently as much a part of my cultural

heritage as almond cookies and rose painting. Maybe the long-

gone person who’d slapped black paint on the cupboard had val-

ued darkness more than religious motifs—

“You coming?” Roelke stood at the door, all but tapping his toe

with impatience.

A shiver iced Chloe’s spine. Then she stiffened that spine, phys-

ically and metaphorically. Someone had killed Petra Lekstrom.

That same someone might be threatening Mom and her friends.

That same someone had most likely set the fire that had scared the living bejeebers out of
her
.

The darkness can be banished, she vowed silently, sending the

mental message toward whomever needed to hear it. I don’t for a

minute believe some shrieking Scandinavian banshees are bring-

ing evil to Decorah. You have pissed me off, and you’re pissing off my gentleman companion/personal cop, and you
will
be punished.

227

twenty-four

At the end of the day, Roelke looked up Hoff ’s address in the

phone book and walked three blocks. After his near-disaster while

skulking around the Rimestad house, he was going for straightfor-

ward with the museum director.

Hoff lived in an old two-story house in the historic district.

Chloe would have rattled off some fancy architectural term, but

the label that came to Roelke’s mind was “depressing.” The bricks

were dark red; the shutters, black. Hoff had done nothing to

brighten the winter night with Christmas cheer. The only decora-

tion in sight was a two-foot straw goat plunked in the snow near

the front door. Roelke, remembering Chloe’s reaction to the goat-

people who’d shown up in the café, shook his head. Weird shit. To

each his own, but if ethnic traditions were to be part of Christmas, he’d choose the Germans’ St. Nicholas customs any day.

Roelke knocked firmly on the front door. A moment later Hoff

opened it. “Why … Roelke! What brings you here?”

228

“Sorry to bother you, but I wanted a chance to speak away

from the museum.” Roelke gave an exaggerated shiver and rubbed

his arms:
It sure is cold out here
.

Hoff led him into the living room. “I just made a pot of coffee,”

Hoff said. “Want some?”

“Decaf?”

“Nope.”

Unless he pulled a late work shift, Roelke avoided caffeine at

night. But this was a late work shift, wasn’t it? Besides, he wanted a minute or two alone. “Sure,” he said. “Thanks.”

After Hoff disappeared, Roelke began a quick visual study. The

room seemed formal, with a marble fireplace and fancy wallpaper

and furniture that looked really old. The Hoffs had clearly invested time and money in their collection of Norwegian folk art, because

a lot of antiques were on display. Colorful weavings hung on the

walls. Rosemaled bowls and plates sat on end tables and book-

shelves—some so old that the painting was almost worn away;

some glowing with vibrant reds and yellows and greens.

The room might once have had a museum quality, but it didn’t

now. Images flickered from a muted television sitting in front of

the fireplace on a wheeled cart. Dolly Parton warbled blather

about “A Hard Candy Christmas,” whatever the hell that was, from

a radio nearby. Newspapers, manila file folders, and mail were

piled on every flat surface.

Well, hunh, Roelke thought. Evidence of a grief-stricken and

over-worked widower came as no surprise, but the antiques con-

firmed something interesting. “You’ve got some great stuff,” he

said when Hoff returned.

229

Hoff put steaming mugs down on a magazine. “Phyllis and I

started searching out Norwegian pieces long ago,” he said, consid-

ering the room with a sad eye. “It’s gotten a lot harder, of course.

Prices keep going up.” He sat, and gestured Roelke into another

chair. “Now. What can I do for you?”

Roelke waved a reassuring hand. “Nothing, sir. But I thought

you should know that another one of those carved message cylin-

ders turned up this morning.”

The older man twitched with dismay. “Another
budstikke
? Dear God. Where?”

“Chloe found it on Sigrid’s porch this morning,” Roelke said.

He felt comfortable saying that much. Buzzelli hadn’t asked him to keep the “gift” quiet, and Sigrid had probably told a dozen people about it already. “I don’t know if the person who left it there

intended it as a threat or merely some kind of holiday greeting.”

“The fire last night, and now another
budstikke
.” Hoff put his elbows on knees and sank his head into his palms for a long

moment. Finally he said, “I just don’t know what to think any-

more. It started with Petra.
Everything
goes back to Petra.”

Roelke waited, letting the silence invite confidences. He sipped

his coffee, which was surprisingly good. Hoff might be falling

apart—or guilty of some criminal act—but the man knew how to

brew coffee.

Hoff studied a hangnail on his left thumb. “Petra,” he repeated

dully.

“Do you think her death might be connected with the two
bud-

stikkes
?”

“
Budstikker
,” Hoff corrected him absently. “I have no idea.”

230

OK, this was not getting anywhere. “I can’t imagine how diffi-

cult everything must be for you,” Roelke said. He wasn’t a warm-

and-fuzzy kind of cop, but he tried hard to sound sympathetic.

“You’re short-staffed, you’ve got the workshops going on, and the

big Christmas weekend coming up … that would be enough to

overwhelm anyone. Even without the murder of a colleague inside

the museum.”

Hoff winced, opened his mouth, closed it again. “It is over-

whelming,” he said at last. “I’ve given my all to Vesterheim, and

until recently loved almost every minute of it. But now, I feel as if everything is teetering on the edge of collapse. Sometimes I just

feel so desperate …”

Roelke nodded encouragingly.

But Hoff abruptly sat up straight. “Forgive me, please. Every

museum director goes through hard times. Vesterheim will come

through all right. It always does. Now, how are you enjoying your

class?”

Roelke assured Hoff that he was enjoying the class immensely.

“Emil’s not just a master carver, he’s a good teacher.”

“It’s too bad you didn’t have a chance to study with his brother

Oscar, too.”

A perfect opening. “Emil told me about a joke he and Oscar

played on Petra,” Roelke said.

Hoff actually smiled. “That war of words between the painters

and the carvers? It’s become part of Vesterheim lore.”

“It sounded as if the Bergsbakken brothers had the last laugh,”

Roelke said. “Unless you’re aware of any animosity between Emil

and Petra that emerged later …?”

231

“No, nothing like that,” Hoff said. “I imagine Emil simply

steered clear of her.”

The two men chatted about Roelke’s first foray into chip carv-

ing for a few more moments, but part of Roelke’s brain was already processing what he’d learned. Hoff and his wife had been collecting Norwegian antiques for years, so it was possible that one or

both
budstikkes (budstikker
—whatever) had come from his own collection. The radio and TV, left on even with a guest present,

suggested that Hoff was afraid to be alone with himself. The way

he said Petra’s name, over and over, indicated the depth of Hoff ’s anger and frustration with the dead woman. And his use of the

word “desperate”—well, that was most revealing of all. Despera-

tion could easily fuel a fit of violent rage, and attempts to cover up afterward.

But if Hoff had killed Petra Lekstrom, where did the message

tubes come in? How about the fire in Chloe’s classroom? What

purpose did
that
serve?

Roelke drained his coffee and stared at the mug in his hand. It

was red, with the words
What part of uff-da do you not understand?

emblazoned in white. All of it! he suddenly wanted to shout. He

was trying to make sense of scattered bits of information in a Norwegian world he simply did not comprehend.

“Want a warm-up?” Hoff asked.

Roelke figured he’d done all he could do for now. “No thanks. I

don’t want to interrupt your evening any further.”

Hoff hesitated, perhaps torn between a visceral wish for com-

pany and the need to return to the open file beside his chair.

Roelke decided for him by getting to his feet, shrugging into his

coat, and leading the way back toward the front door.

232

On the far side of the entrance hall an open door led to a din-

ing room. When Roelke glanced inside, something unexpected

caught him like a fishhook and reeled him into the room. “That’s a practice board on the mantel! Are you a chip carver?”

“No, no,” Hoff said. “I’ve taken a class or two, but I don’t keep

up with it. I like to see how instructors work with their students.

And frankly, it’s been a struggle at times to keep the carving workshops afloat. They don’t attract the numbers that the painting

classes do.”

Roelke flipped on an overhead light and walked across the

room. The plank resembled the practice board he’d been making

that week, with row upon row of different designs. But even to his unskilled eye, Hoff ’s work far outshone his own. Somehow the

practice board had become a piece of folk art in its own right.

“You really should look at Phyllis’s rosemaling,” Howard said.

“She was the family artist. Not me. See that sled?” He pointed

proudly. “That’s the piece that earned her a Gold Medal.”

“Her painting is beautiful,” Roelke said. “But since I’m taking a

carving class this week, I’m sort of focused on that.”

“Ah. Of course.” Hoff sounded embarrassed. “Phyllis liked that

board, and insisted on displaying it. I suppose now I should take it down, but …” The words trailed away.

“I know how much work goes into even practice pieces,”

Roelke said, with forced heartiness. “I say, Leave it where it is.”

With that, he made his exit.

Outside, the wind was rising. Roelke automatically turned up

his collar as he started down the sidewalk, but he scarcely noticed the cold. So Howard Hoff is a carver, he thought. Who knew?

233



“Howard Hoff is a carver?” Chloe repeated. She was in Sigrid’s

kitchen, but no one else was home.

“He is,” Roelke confirmed. “So he might have carved that little

goat. He tried to point my interest elsewhere, but I couldn’t tell if he didn’t want me to know he carved or just wanted me to admire

his wife’s work. In terms of the
budstikke
, … is it possible to carve something today and then make it look like an antique?”

“Sure. Sandpaper, a Brillo pad, some vinegar … there are lots of

ways to distress wood.” She twiddled the phone cord, considering.

“A conservator could tell, of course, but not your average Joe.”

“Could you tell?”

“Possibly. I’m no expert in that field.”

“Hunh.”

She could hear Roelke thinking; picture him sitting by a phone

in Emil’s house, knee bouncing. “You think Howard’s claim of get-

ting that
budstikke
with the threatening note inside was just a ruse?”

“Could be,” Roelke allowed. “If he attacked Petra, and pan-

icked, he might have staged a fake threat to throw suspicion in a

different direction.”

“He did sort of tell me about it out of the blue,” Chloe mused.

“So. Maybe he made himself a
budstikke
, and—”

“Or maybe he used one he already had. His house is full of old

Norwegian stuff. Is it ethical for a museum director to collect

antiques?”

234

“Well, that’s sticky,” Chloe admitted. “For all we know the

pieces you saw were family heirlooms, or collected during a period when he wasn’t working for Vesterheim.”

“The point is, Hoff might have had a couple of those antique

message tubes,” Roelke mused. “Or maybe he even made a couple

and scuffed them up before planting one in his own office, and

another on Sigrid’s front porch.”

Chloe hunched her shoulders. She hated thinking that Howard

might do something so horrible. Hated having to think about a

woman’s murder. Hated having this conversation over the phone,