the advanced class is also an experienced teacher. I am
very
happy to announce that Marit Kallerud has agreed to teach the Beginning Telemark class.”
This is not good, Roelke thought. Chloe’s expression suggested
that she’d been smacked in the face with a pickled herring. “Re-
member,” he whispered, “the whole idea of this trip was for you to spend time with …”
Chloe pinned him to the wall with a look that had gone from
stunned to mutinous. He stopped talking.
“We have every reason to believe that what happened last night
was an isolated incident, and Chief Moyer has assured me that his
officers will keep a special eye on the museum,” Hoff was saying. “I hope that you all can move past the terrible shock and throw your-selves into your creative endeavors.”
Roelke glanced at Chloe. She had a
Yeah, right
, expression on her face.
“The painting classes will start a little late today, to give our
instructors a chance to get organized,” Howard concluded, “but I
suggest that you students go ahead and settle into your class-
rooms.”
37
People drained their cups and started gathering their things.
“This is not going to work,” Chloe said bleakly. “My mother
will be on my case every minute.”
“No, she won’t.”
“Maybe I could switch to the carving class.”
Roelke shook his head. “If you drop out of your mom’s class,
all you’ll do is embarrass her, and—” Over Chloe’s shoulder he saw Marit approaching, and he raised his voice. “Hello, Marit.”
“Good morning, Roelke.” Chloe’s mother looked composed,
but Roelke saw the tight pinch to her mouth. Evidently Marit also
had some reservations about this new arrangement.
Marit turned to her daughter. “I’m sure you’re disappointed
about the new arrangements.”
“Not at all,” Chloe said. “I’ll be learning from the best.” Roelke gave her credit for a game attempt.
Marit smoothed her hair, which did not need smoothing. “Sig-
rid has more experience teaching Hallingdal than I do.”
“It’s
fine
, Mom.”
“So you’ll just have to muddle along with me.” Marit glanced at
the wall clock. “I need to speak with you about another matter,
Chloe. Do you recall Howard saying last night that Vesterheim’s
curator recently resigned?”
Roelke felt Chloe stiffen. “Ye-es,” she said slowly.
“She wrote a grant application for a folklore project. The
museum received funds to conduct oral history interviews about
Norwegian-American Christmas traditions. There are several
interviews left to conduct, and the project must be completed by
the end of the calendar year or the money will disappear. As you
can imagine, Howard’s worried.”
38
“Ye-e-es,” Chloe said, even more slowly. Roelke marveled at the
degree of wariness she managed to convey in that single word.
“So I told Howard that you’d conduct the final interviews.”
Chloe blinked. “You
what
? Mom, I’m a curator, not a folklor-ist!”
“For Heaven’s sake, Chloe,” Marit said. “You work for the His-
torical Society of Wisconsin. You’ve got a master’s degree in
museum studies. You’ve been involved in folklore your entire life.”
“But I’m supposed to be painting, remember?” Something in
Chloe’s eyes changed. “Or … do you not want the daughter ‘who’s
never picked up a brush’ in your class? Is
that
it?”
Roelke groaned silently.
“You can do both!” Marit waved an airy hand. “Just schedule
the interviews for evenings. Since you’ve never shown a
jot
of interest in painting before, I don’t imagine you’ll be spending all of your time—”
“Next time, please ask before volunteering me to—”
“Vesterheim needs help,” Marit said crisply. “And after every-
thing’s Howard had to handle … well, I can’t imagine that you’d
even consider refusing.”
Across the room, a student snatched a banana. Howard poured
himself a cup of coffee. One of the food ladies started filling the sink with hot water. Everyone was evidently oblivious to the
hushed exchange taking place in the corner … but Roelke felt
something crackle in the air like electricity before a storm.
And at that moment, he realized that he was a complete and
utter moron. Why had he thought he could help ease tension
between Chloe, who he was only beginning to understand, and
Marit, who he barely knew? What the hell had possessed him?
39
At last Chloe said, “Fine, Mom. Whatever you want.”
“Thank you, dear.” Marit gave her daughter an
All is well
nod.
“Stop by Howard’s office sometime and pick up the files. Now, I
must get to the classroom. Don’t be late!” She smiled brightly and hurried away.
Chloe turned to Roelke. “What was she thinking?”
Roelke had no idea what Marit was thinking.
Chloe folded her arms. “I just agreed to spend my evenings
interviewing octogenarians about paper hearts and
smultringer
.”
Now Roelke had no idea what Chloe was thinking. Just be sup-
portive, he told himself. “Maybe the interviews won’t be so bad.”
“No, no,” she said impatiently. “The assignment doesn’t bother
me. I love meeting elderly people and hearing their stories. But I suggested this trip in an effort to improve relations with my
mother, who has been known to observe that I don’t spend time
with her or share any of her interests.”
“And yet?” Roelke asked, since she seemed to be waiting for a
response.
“And
yet,
she’d just gave away my spare time. Silly me, but I’d expected to spend time with her this week. And with you. Now I’ll
be spending my evenings talking about goats and—”
“Goats?” He really was struggling to keep up.
“
Julebukkers
. Don’t ask. I hate them.”
Roelke tried to remember if he’d ever heard Chloe use the
word ‘hate’ before. He came up empty.
“The real issue is that my mother, evidently, does not want to
spend time with
me
.”
Roelke started to say something along the lines of
At least you’ll
be sharing class time.
Fortunately, common sense kicked in. Sty-40
mied by the notion of a verbal response, he switched into action
mode and picked up her tub of supplies. “Come on.”
He helped Chloe haul her stuff to her classroom. Marit was
busy at the front. Seven women and two men were already seated
at tables, laying out tubes of paint and jars of rice and a bewildering variety of other clutter. They reminded Roelke of his grand-
mother and friends playing bingo in the church basement long
ago. Some of the ladies set out their game cards with equal preci-
sion, and surrounded them with troll dolls and oversized dice and
whatever else they considered lucky.
Chloe picked a spot in the back row, far corner. “Thanks,
Roelke. Can we meet in the lounge at lunchtime?”
“It’s a date,” he promised.
Roelke’s classroom was a big industrial-looking room on the
ground floor. Three tables had been arranged in a U in front of a
blackboard. Emil Bergsbakken was arranging decoratively carved
objects on another table. Roelke slid into the lone empty chair.
The woman on his left had warm gray eyes and a long mane of
silver hair held in place with butterfly barrettes. “Lavinia Carmichael,” she said in response to Roelke’s introduction, and offered a firm handshake.
“Good morning,” Emil called. The carving instructor looked
tired. Well, Roelke thought, it was a short night. The evening
before, when they’d arrived at his farmhouse just north of Deco-
rah, Emil had politely showed Roelke to the guest bedroom and
41
immediately retired. Emil had likely known Petra, and was shaken
by her death. Hell of a way to start the week, Roelke thought.
“Norway has a rich tradition in woodcarving.” Emil held up an
ornately-carved mantel clock. “This is an example of acanthus
work. Note the flowing leaves and vines.”
“Stunning fluid energy in that piece,” Lavinia murmured.
Roelke, who knew nothing about fluid energy, nodded.
Emil continued, “Now, this platter shows chip carving, which is
the style we’ll be working with this week.” His voice gained
strength. “V-shaped gouges carved into the wood create intricate
but balanced patterns, because life is made up darkness and light.
This carving tradition stretches back over 1,500 years. The most
common motifs are geometric.”
Lavinia shook her head in admiration. “Look at the symmetry
in those rosettes.”
Roelke, who knew nothing about rosettes—symmetrical or
otherwise—nodded again. Since his objective had been to accom-
pany Chloe and Marit, he really hadn’t given this chip carving class much thought. He could whittle a simple bird or turtle, but that
was about it. Now he wondered if he was in over his head.
“I’m going to pass around some handouts,” Emil said. “Then
we’ll begin.”
Lavinia took two knives stored in plastic tubes from a well-
worn canvas bag. “Thank heavens,” she murmured. “I’ve been
looking forward to this class for months, and when I heard about
Petra last night, I was afraid Howard would cancel everything.
Trust Petra to go out with a bang.”
That seemed cold. “I beg your pardon?”
42
Lavinia flapped a hand. “I shouldn’t have said that. Never
mind.”
“Sure,” Roelke said. “I take it you knew Ms. Lekstrom, though?”
“Oh, I knew her.” Lavinia flipped through an over-stuffed
three-ring binder and opened it to a blank page. “If it weren’t for her, I never would have discovered chip carving, which I love.”
“Wasn’t Petra a painter? Did she carve, too?”
“No, Petra stuck to painting. That’s the point.” Lavinia accepted
a packet of papers and passed the stack to Roelke. “But I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.”
Emil said, “I want to analyze some designs so you understand
the foundations of chip carving. The first important element is
focal point.” He held up the platter. “As you can see here …”
Roelke tried to follow along, but his mind was turning over
Lavinia’s cryptic comments. At the reception, Sigrid had men-
tioned that Lavinia was a member of the Sixty-Seven Club, but
evidently Petra had said or done something that caused Lavinia to
give up painting altogether.
He turned that over in his brain. Simply passing that tidbit on
to Chief Moyer would lead to official questioning. That might be
inevitable, but it would be much more pleasant for Lavinia—who,
after all, had no idea she’d just been chatting with a cop—if he
could discover the story unofficially.
He drummed one thumb against the table. Someone—maybe
him, maybe Chloe—needed to talk to Marit.
43
six
Chloe watched the clock’s minute hand creep toward noon
with tensed muscles, ready to bolt.
Yes
—
“Remember,” Mom called, “I want everyone to finish mixing
their paints before lunch.”
Chloe dropped back into her chair. Shit. The long morning
wasn’t over yet.
The first thing Chloe had learned about rosemaling was that
she evidently had the eye-hand coordination of a goldfish. Mom
had begun by teaching some basic brush strokes. As she’d wan-
dered the aisles, she’d found nothing to compliment in her daugh-
ter’s attempts.
There are no flat lines in a C-stroke, Chloe.
…
Hold
the brush straight up and down, Chloe
…
You must
turn
the brush in
an S-stroke, Chloe.
Chloe had been enormously relieved when Mom announced that they were moving on to the preparation of
their paints.
Now, Chloe dubiously regarded the blobs on her palette. She
had imagined squeezing dollops of paint from their tubes, grab-
44
bing a brush, and going to town. Instead, the class had just spent over an hour mixing their own shades from complex equations.
The second thing Chloe had learned about rosemaling was that
she had no eye for color. Mom had yet to approve any of her
daughter’s attempts.
Try adding a pea-sized dollop of yellow
ochre.
…
Fold in the light hue instead of squashing it, your color’s getting muddy
…
Don’t use so much Prussian blue, it’s too strong.
I am not staying here through lunch, Chloe thought. In desper-
ation she leaned toward the woman sitting to her right. Gwen was
a ringer—clearly an experienced painter. Chloe had spent the
morning both feeling intimidated by her tablemate and trying to
copy everything she did.
Time to copy. “Gwen?” Chloe asked politely. “Do you think my
dark green is OK?”
Gwen, a round-faced brunette woman perhaps a decade older
than Chloe, leaned over. “Looks good to me.”
“
Thank
you.” Chloe silently declared victory and diapered her palette in plastic wrap to keep the paint from drying. Then she
went to find Roelke.
He was waiting for her in the lounge. “Hey,” she said. “How was
your morning?”
“Great!”
“Really?” She tipped her head. Roelke McKenna was not a man
to enthuse lightly. But he did look honestly and truly pleased.
“I learned how to sharpen my knife. How about your morn-