Island Getaway, An Art Crime Team Mystery (16 page)

“It’s gone,” Chief Steen said. “Many years
ago. It sat empty, and then it burned one night. There’s nothing
left.”

“Oh.” That was too bad. At least she might
have been able to see the place where he’d lived. “Is there a
church? And a churchyard?”

There was. “Your grandmother was buried
there,” Steen said. “I suppose she still is. Unless they plowed her
under. If no one paid the dues...”

The Swedes obviously had a more relaxed
relationship to their dead than she was used to. Annika tried not
to blanch at the idea of anyone’s grandmother being plowed under
and someone else buried on top, but she didn’t think she was quite
successful. “How would I get there from here?”

“Martebo? It’s just up the road. You could
rent a car.”

“I don’t drive,” Annika said.

Chief Steen looked at her as if he suspected
her sanity, and she added, “I’m from New York City. There’s no need
for a car there.” In fact, not only was there no need, but parking
was at such a premium that paying for a garage was like taking on a
second mortgage. Or paying rent for a second apartment, which was
what most people did.

“There’s a bus,” Steen said. “It runs a few
times a day from the main terminal downtown. Takes an hour or
so.”

Maybe this afternoon she could go there.

Or maybe not; with everything that had
happened, it was already past lunchtime. Maybe she’d better save
the out-of-town trip for tomorrow and spend the rest of the day
doing research in Visby. “Thank you, Chief Steen.”

“You’re welcome,” Steen said. “So you don’t
know who might have shot Gustav Sundin? He didn’t say anything
yesterday when you spoke?”

Annika shook her head. “He didn’t say much
at all. I asked if he’d known my father. He seemed surprised to
hear that he was dead. And then he just stood up and walked out. I
was going there today to see if maybe he’d tell me more.”

Johan Steen nodded. “Someone broke into your
hotel room last night, is that right?”

Annika blinked at the rapid change of topic,
and nodded.

“You didn’t think to call us?”

She hadn’t, honestly. She’d been too rattled
by what had happened, and too determined to get out of there.
“Nothing was stolen. I figured it had to do with the hotel more
than it did with me.”

“So you didn’t try to avoid involving the
police because you were afraid of what we’d find if we started
talking to you?”

Annika swallowed. “What would you find?”

“I don’t know,” Steen said mildly. “You tell
me.”

“Nothing! You wouldn’t have found anything,
because I haven’t done anything wrong. I have nothing to hide.”

Steen nodded, but didn’t answer. “We’re done
for now. But don’t go anywhere,
Fröken
Holst. We’ll likely
want to talk to you again.”

“Martebo—” Annika began.

“You may go to Martebo. But stay on Gotland.
Don’t make us come after you,
Fröken
Holst.”

He didn’t wait for her to say anything, just
went back to his paperwork. Annika made her way out, feeling just a
bit weak in the knees.

She expected, more than halfway, that someone would stop her before
she could make it out of the police station. It sounded like they
suspected her, crazy as that seemed.

But nobody talked to her on the way down the
hallway and through the door into the bright sunshine of the
parking lot, and as soon as she was free, Annika stopped among the
parked cars and took a deep breath. It felt like the first she’d
been able to draw since she’d found Gustav dead this morning. She
closed her eyes and felt the sun on her face and just enjoyed
standing there, a free woman.

By now it was well past noon, and her
stomach felt hollow. The best she’d been able to do this morning
was a roll, and she’d used that up walking out to Gustav’s place.
Before she did anything else, she should find something to eat.

Luckily, Visby was full of small cafés and
places where she could pick up a sandwich to go, and it was while
she was sitting at a bench at Almedalen Park, watching the sunlight
play on the dancing waters of the fountain and eating what amounted
to a shrimp po’boy, that she heard a voice. “Annika!”

For a second her heart skipped a beat, and
then settled into a normal rhythm again when she realized that the
male American tones didn’t belong to Nick, but to Curt. The guilt
made her smile a bit brighter than usual when she greeted him.
“Curt. Hi.”

“Hi.” He grinned and dropped down next to
her. He’d changed his shirt since yesterday; now it was a
greenish-brown plaid, while yesterday’s had been tan and blue. The
brown corduroys were the same. He gave Annika’s bare legs an
appreciative glance as he made himself comfortable. “What’s going
on?”

Where to start?

Annika swallowed her mouthful of shrimp and
cleared her throat. “Remember that man we spoke to yesterday at the
tavern?”

“Who could forget? Rude old buzzard.”

“He’s dead.”

Curt blinked. Opened his mouth and closed it
again. “That makes a difference, I guess.”

Annika took another bite of shrimp. She was
really going to miss the shrimp when she got back to Brooklyn. It
was a whole lot more expensive there, and didn’t taste near as
good.

“What happened?” Curt asked.

“He was shot.”

“Shot?”

Annika nodded. And then wondered if perhaps
she shouldn’t be telling him this. Nobody had said that she
couldn’t talk about what had happened, and this was such a small
place that chances were any kind of news would get around quickly
anyway, but maybe it would be best if she didn’t share any of the
specific details of the case with anyone who hadn’t been there.

Not that she had any specific details to
share, really. Just that he’d been shot. And it wasn’t like that
would be a secret for long.

“What happened?” Curt said again.

“I have no idea. Someone came and shot
him.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know him any better
than you do. The only time I talked to him was last night, for two
minutes.”

Curt nodded. And looked at the fountain for
a minute while Annika chewed. “How do you know?”

She swallowed. “I found him.”

He turned to her, hazel eyes wide behind the
glasses. “
You
found him? How?”

“I walked out to his house this morning. You
knew I planned to.”

“Yes,” Curt said, “but I thought you’d get
in touch with me so we could go together.” There was a hint of
reproach in his voice.

“I’m sorry,” Annika said.

She didn’t mean it. She’d wanted to talk to
Gustav on her own. She was Carl Magnusson’s daughter, while Curt
was someone else’s son, someone Gustav didn’t know. But he was
clearly upset, so apologizing seemed the thing to do.

Curt shook his head. “I’m the one who’s
sorry. I can’t believe you found a dead body. Was it awful?”

Annika suppressed a shiver. “It was pretty
bad. Blood everywhere.” And flies. She put the rest of the po’boy
down and wrapped the waxed paper around it. Suddenly the shrimp
didn’t taste so good anymore.

“Wow.” Curt’s eyes were bright behind the
glasses. “That’s... horrible. But exciting too. So what did you
do?”

“Called the police,” Annika said.

“What did they say?”

“Not a lot.” She’d done most of the talking.
“They asked if I have a gun.”

He tilted his head to look at her, and that
hank of hair fell across his forehead again. The sun reflected off
his glasses so she couldn’t see his eyes. “Do you?”

“Of course not. I’m a librarian!”

Curt nodded, lips twitching. “I’m a computer
analyst.”

“And do you have a gun?”

He leaned back on the bench. “Actually, I
do. I grew up in the boonies. There are raccoons and snakes and
such.”

That made sense. While all Brooklyn had was
smalltime crooks and hoodlums, and one wasn’t allowed to shoot
them. “I’ve never even held one. I certainly wouldn’t know how to
shoot anyone.”

“Of course not,” Curt said and grinned.
“Only an idiot would think so.” He glanced at her. “Are the police
idiots?”

Annika considered it. “I don’t think so.”
Officer Jansson had seemed competent enough, and surely Johan Steen
couldn’t be stupid if he had risen to the rank of chief of police.
He’d seemed a bit... sexist, maybe. It was as if he’d sort of
mentally patted her on the head and told her to go off and play.
But he hadn’t seemed incompetent. “They’ll figure out who did it,
I’m sure.”

Curt nodded. “In a small place like this,
there can’t be that many people out to get each other. If he’d had
a disagreement with someone, surely someone would know.”

Surely.

“Maybe it was a robbery,” Annika said. An
old man, living on his own, seemed like a prime candidate for a
robbery like that. Always assuming he’d had something worth
stealing, of course, and Gustav’s house certainly hadn’t looked
like a treasure trove. But then she didn’t look like she should be
carrying anything valuable either, and someone had searched her
luggage twice.

“Did his house look like someone had been
through it?” Curt asked.

Annika thought back. “I’m not sure. I walked
in and saw him, and I really didn’t notice anything else. Just the
blood.” She hadn’t gone into the rest of the small cottage, just
the living room, and as best she could remember it had been a bit
messy, but not as if someone had torn through it looking for
something. Nothing like her hotel room the other night.

She suppressed another shudder.

“I looked for you at the Valdemar Hotel this
morning,” Curt said. “The woman in reception said you’d moved.” He
grinned, but there was something behind it, something like a
challenge or maybe hurt feelings. “Were you trying to ditch
me?”

“No, of course not.” She reached out and put
a hand on his knee for a second, before she realized that that
might give him an impression she wasn’t prepared to follow through
on. She liked him, and she certainly hadn’t tried to duck him—other
than that she wanted to talk to Gustav without Curt’s company—but
she also wasn’t willing to give him the idea that she was more
interested than she was. He seemed like a nice enough guy and they
had a lot in common, but she wasn’t about to do anything rash. She
wasn’t sure she liked him enough for that, and besides, there was
Nick.

“What happened?”

“My room at the Valdemar Hotel was broken
into,” Annika said. “Someone went through everything I brought to
Sweden with me.” Or everything she hadn’t left behind in Stockholm,
anyway. “They also slashed the mattress and pillows. I couldn’t
stay there. So the proprietor sent me to a friend of hers who also
has a small hotel, or more like a pension, really.”

“Pension?”

“Like a bed and breakfast. It’s up near the
north gate.”

Curt nodded. “Why would someone break into
your room?”

“I don’t know,” Annika admitted. “But it’s
happened before, too. In Stockholm. Although whoever searched my
room there was a lot more careful that I shouldn’t notice he’d been
there.”

So either the same person had come
back—why?—and searched again, and had gotten angry when he still
hadn’t found what he was looking for, or someone else had searched
her room in Stockholm, someone with fewer anger management
issues.

“Well, do you have something someone would
want?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. Just my
clothes. I lost my eReader and my dad’s ashes at Arlanda
Airport.”

Curt stared at her. “You’re kidding? Why
would someone want your dad’s ashes?”

“No idea. I think maybe they thought there
was something else in the bag instead. I just don’t know what.”

“Sounds like your dad has something to do
with this,” Curt said.

“How can he? He’s dead.”

“I don’t know,” Curt said, “but it’s a real
shame you didn’t get to talk to that old guy.”

It was. And the information Johan Steen had
given her didn’t amount to much, either.

“I think maybe you should spend some time at
the library,” Curt said. “Or the newspaper morgue. Do some
research. Maybe you’ll learn something about your dad that
way.”

Maybe so. Annika got to her feet and looked
around. “Do you know where the library is?”

“Sure.” He smiled and rose too. “I’ll take
you there.”

Nick spent the best part of the afternoon on the phone. With
Fredrik in Stockholm, with the technical analyst at the Art Crime
Team’s Washington, D.C. office; even with his mom in Florida. He
came out of it all feeling just as frustrated and annoyed as when
he went in.

“There’s nothing I can do about Chief
Steen,” Fredrik told him. “It’s his jurisdiction. I can’t remove
him from it without a damn good reason. A much better reason than
that you just don’t like his face.”

“It’s not his face I don’t like,” Nick
grumbled.

Fredrik sighed. “I don’t get it. You’ve
dealt with his kind before. You just go along and work around him
the best you can. I’ve seen you do it.”

“He goddamn patronized me!”

Fredrik’s voice was uneven with laughter.
“He’s old enough to be your father. Let him.”

“You wouldn’t say that if he was calling
you
son!”

“Maybe not,” Fredrik admitted, “but we all
do what we have to do. You should be used to that by now. Not all
international cooperation goes smoothly.”

“I suppose.”

“So tell me again what happened this
morning. Just in case I have to interfere. Or have someone else
interfere.”

“I thought you said you trusted Steen,” Nick
said.

Fredrik sighed. “It’s not that I don’t. I’m
sure he’s is capable. Gotland doesn’t have much violent crime, not
like it seems on TV, but like everywhere else, it has its share.
He’s handled murders before.”