Old World Murder (2010) (24 page)

Chloe’s mouth turned up in the hint of a smile, remembering her own days in the trenches. Then her smile abruptly disappeared. She sat up straight. Could it really be so simple?
Could
it?

Probably not. Almost surely not.

But it was worth a try.

She jumped to her feet and trotted back to her car. It was only four-thirty. She had time to check this out before meeting Roelke.

She drove through the open site-access gate, past the Village, through Finn-Dane, on toward the Norwegian area. She took the shortest route, driving backward on the site loop. She tried to drive slowly, wary of any farm or maintenance vehicle that might roar around one of the blind curves.

She managed to reach the Norwegian area without catastrophe, and accelerated down the long driveway toward the Kvaale farm. She was almost at the end when she suddenly braked hard. The interpreters would scream if she left modern tire tracks in the farmyard. And rightly so. She parked in the drive.

The farmstead was quiet, all buildings locked up tight. Chloe loped past the house and summer kitchen. The log stabbur sat ahead of her, weathered silver and perched a foot off the ground. The design discouraged rodents and mold. It was a good place to store things. A safe place. The traditional place.

The door to the stabbur’s main room, where Chloe had first met Delores, was locked. The upper floor extended out over the lower room, accessed by steps leading up from the porch. Chloe charged up the steps—

Her left foot hit something hard in a place where nothing but air should be. She fell down three steps, landing on her butt and cracking one elbow against the wall. “Ow!” she yelped. She struggled back to her feet, rubbing her elbow, then flexing it cautiously. Painful, but not out of service.

She approached the steps warily this time, and saw the pane of clear Plexiglas used to keep visitors from climbing to the second story. Chloe wrestled it from its brackets, tossed it aside, and stampeded back up the stairs to the loft.

A sprawling, fluffy mountain of fleeces covered the floor. Some tied into tight bales, some sprawled loose. Some white, some gray, some brownish-black. Some clean, some with tips still clotted with dried manure.

Geez Louise. No wonder Delores had told Cindy not to worry about wasting wool as she practiced spinning.

Chloe began pawing among the heavy fleeces. Soon panting, she heaved one aside, then another. Her hands grew greasy with lanolin. Nothing … nothing there … nothing against the side wall.

And then she saw it. In one of the back corners, not covered with wool but screened by it, sat a rosemaled ale bowl.

“Holy Mother of God,” Chloe breathed. She waded to the corner, wiping her hands furiously on her shirt. Then she gently eased the bowl from the floor. It was smaller than most but carefully carved, with two cow heads—complete with horns—serving as handles. The rosemaling was an exquisite blend of flourishes and swirls dabbed in blue and orange and yellow. The overall effect was spectacular.

Chloe felt a thickening in her throat, and hot tears in her eyes. Had Gro felt a fierce pride in her work? Had she been happily married, or had she channeled frustration and loneliness into these carved and painted lines? Did she worry about the fate of her daughter, finding her path in a male-ordered world?

Chloe blew out a long, slow breath, trying to think clearly. Speculation could wait. Right now she needed to get the ale bowl to a safe place. She crept down the stairs with the artifact held in front of her like an offering. She eased the bowl to the porch floorboards long enough to replace the Plexiglas barricade, then cradled the artifact back in her arms.

But as she walked around the log farmhouse, she saw a car in the distance beyond the sheep pasture, driving along the site road from the south—a car that had evidently just entered the grounds through the Norwegian gate.

A white Chevette.

Chloe froze as she saw Nika’s car approach the Kvaale drive.
Keep going,
she urged silently.
Don’t turn left.

The Chevette turned left.

Chloe darted back behind the house. She didn’t want her intern to see this ale bowl. Not yet. Not without explaining some things.

But where could she hide it? If she tried to enter the main house, Nika would see her. There wasn’t time to climb back up into the stabbur and re-hide the bowl.

Tires crunched on gravel as Nika drove up the long drive.

“Shit!” Chloe scanned the back farmyard. No time to fish her keys out and unlock the summer kitchen or the corn crib or the barn—

No, wait.
The barn.
Both bays of the structure were locked, but there was a small wooden door cut low into the front wall of the bay nearest the stabbur—probably used to shovel out manure. Chloe raced to the barn, dropped to her knees, scrabbled at the wooden latch, opened the door.

At the last moment she balked. No way was she going to put this holy grail of ale bowls down on a manure-dotted stable floor. She leaned into the opening, arm blindly flailing … and her palm hit something rough and scratchy. Burlap. The interpreters used burlap sacks to camouflage the fire extinguishers kept in every building.

Perfect.
Chloe pinched the sack between thumb and forefinger, jerked, and felt the heavy extinguisher fall. Grunting, she pulled the sack free, made a nest, and deposited the bowl inside the stable.

A car door slammed just as Chloe re-latched the little wooden door. She wiped her palms on her trousers, preparing to meet her intern with a smile on her face and a lie on her lips.
Hey, Nika. Delores asked me to look at that fanning mill in the breezeway. What brings you to Kvaale?

But something stopped her. A twinge of unease, a flicker of intuition, an unheard whisper from Gro—
something
beyond conscious reason took over. Chloe darted back into the breezeway’s shadows and crouched behind the fanning mill.

Footsteps pounded through the peaceful afternoon. Chloe stopped breathing. It sounded as if Nika was running straight to Chloe’s hiding place … but then the footsteps passed the barn. A few seconds later Chloe heard Nika race up the stabbur steps.

Chloe leaned her forehead against the fanning mill. Nika
knew
. How? How had Nika learned that some long-gone interpreter had stashed the bowl in the stabbur? Chloe felt something cold in her stomach, a sinking sensation.

A minute passed, the stillness broken only by the Ossabaw hogs rooting grumpily in their pen behind the barn. Chloe tried to think. She had to get away while Nika was up in the stabbur. Just grab the bowl again, and make a dash for her car.

Chloe shot to her feet, took one step, stopped. Her car was blocked from behind in the narrow drive by Nika’s Chevette.

Footsteps sounded from the stabbur again, pounding back down the steps. “Chloe? Where are you?”

Chloe froze.

“I know you’re here, Chloe!”

This was all wrong. She crouched back behind the fanning mill.

“I know you found the bowl! Just come out here and give me the damn bowl!”

Chloe tasted something metallic on her tongue. If Nika had followed her to Kvaale, she hadn’t come alone.

Where was she?

Roelke sat in his squad car, trying to look inconspicuous. He shouldn’t be here. He could get away with circling the Old World Wisconsin parking lot while on patrol. But to park here, waiting—no, that was bad. He attracted too much attention.

He glanced at his watch again. Almost five-fifteen. Had Chloe blown off his request to meet? Forgotten about it altogether? Plunged headfirst into trouble?

He flipped again though his index cards. A missing ale bowl. A director who’d worked in Las Vegas. A maintenance supervisor who might, or might not, be involved with a gambling operation. An embroidered apron. A murder in Dane County. An intern with an arrest record, who’d recently had her tires slashed. Jesus! Roelke stuffed the cards back into his pocket. If there was a pattern here, he was too dumb to see it.

Two interpreters walked through the gate and gave Roelke curious looks as they headed toward their cars. He nodded politely, trying to look both unalarmed and unalarming. He needed to talk to Chloe before someone asked why he was here. He needed to talk to Chloe before his radio squawked with a call about daffodil bulbs or road kill or some other damn thing.

So where the hell was she?

____

Crouched behind the fanning mill, Chloe considered her options. On either side of her, a locked door led into one of the barn bays. If she climbed the fence into the hog pen behind her, the Ossabaws would come running in greedy anticipation, squeals and grunts proclaiming
Here she is! Here she is!
And straight ahead was the farmyard where Joel was waiting.

She had to keep him away from the ale bowl. So: there was nothing for it but to walk out into the yard and try to bluff her way out of this. She stood, and took two uneasy steps.

A gunshot split the still afternoon. Reverberations echoed in Chloe’s head. The saliva in her mouth evaporated. An angry blue jay squawked somewhere behind the barn.

“Chloe!” Joel yelled. “I want that damn bowl, and I want it now!”

Calm, Chloe ordered herself. Stay calm. She pressed a hand against her ribcage, trying to send that message to her thumping heart.

“You’re pissing me off!”

Chloe felt nausea ball in her stomach.

“You want to play hide-and-seek? Fine. I will find you.” His voice faded as he spoke.

Chloe put one palm against the log wall to steady herself. It sounded as if Joel was circling away from her in his search. That was good. And—and he must have come alone after all. You’re pissing
me
off, he’d said.
I
will find you. Also good. Maybe she could still get out of there. She could dart across the open yard, make a run for it through the woods—

No
. The thought of abandoning Gro’s bowl to Joel prompted a fierce burn of anger in her chest. She had to grab the bowl before running. Chloe scrabbled in her pocket with shaking fingers, found her keys, darted to the door on her right. She’d been
stupid
to put the bowl through the pass-through—

A muffled bellow of anger—it sounded like Joel was near the summer kitchen—made Chloe’s fingers tremble as she shoved the padlock into her pocket. She cracked the door, wriggled through, and pulled it closed behind her.

“Chloe!” Joel’s voice was closer again.

It was already too late. Coming inside had been even more stupid. She was about to be trapped in a one-room stable with Gro’s ale bowl.

Maybe she could snatch the bowl and hide in the loft. Two windows lent only dim light to the room. Chloe frantically cast about for a ladder or stairway. Where the hell was access to the loft?

There was no access to the loft. No functioning loft at all. Half a dozen rough log beams ran front to back above her head. Smaller poles lay across them from side to side to form a low hay mow of sorts, but no sturdy loft.
Shit
.

Chloe needed a weapon. If she waited right by the door, maybe she could surprise Joel when he came inside. She hastily checked the three stalls—empty, empty, empty. No shovel to hit him with. No pitchfork to stab him with. What stupid curator had outfitted this place? The room held nothing but a waist-high grain bin, perhaps three feet wide, near the door.

“Chloe!” Joel was approaching the stable. She was out of options.

Chloe threw her weight against the side of the heavy bin. She managed to shove it across the doorway with an ear-splitting screech.

“Chloe!”
He was right outside.

As Chloe retreated from the door her heel hit something hard. Oh, God. Had she kicked the ale bowl? She spun around. The ale bowl was untouched. But instead—

Joel wrenched the door open. He appeared in the doorway, visible waist-up above the bin. The academic face Chloe had seen glow when regarding his fiancée had settled into hard lines. His dark eyes glinted behind his horn-rimmed glasses. His right hand held a gun. It was pointed at her.

He slapped his left palm on the grain bin. “Move this damn thing.”

“Joel—”

He slammed his hip against the bin. It shuddered several inches into the room.

Chloe stooped, came up swinging the fire extinguisher, and banged the canister onto the grain bin for balance. After years of safety training at historic sites, the motions came instinctively. Pull the pin. Aim the nozzle. Squeeze the handle.

Joel’s face disappeared beneath a cloud of dry chemical powder. He stumbled backward with an indistinct bellow. And his right hand jerked. The shot deafened her. The glass window in the front wall exploded.

“Shit!” Chloe gasped. Bowl or no bowl, she needed
out
. Climbing over the grain bin would land her in Joel’s lap. Jagged shards of glass lined the front window. Last option: the back window.

A wooden peg held the six-pane window closed. Chloe yanked it free and shoved the window up with a thud. Adrenaline fueled her launch and she skidded through the window, scraping her belly, wildly kicking her feet.

She landed painfully in an oozing black slurry of mud that coated her hands, soaked through her pants. She heard the grain bin being heaved aside. Joel was already back on his feet.

Muck sucked at Chloe’s shoes as she scrambled to find footing, aiming toward the fence separating her from the breezeway. Joel wanted the ale bowl more than he wanted her. The padlock was still in her pocket. If she moved fast enough, she could lock him into the stable. That would buy her a few more minutes.

But she’d forgotten the two Ossabaws. They reached her before she got to the fence. One knocked against her thigh. She fell again, landing painfully on the same elbow she’d smacked earlier. “Get away, you stupid hogs!” she hissed. “I don’t have any food!” One hog stared her down with dark glittering eyes. The second nudged her again, its bristles scraping roughly against her bare arm. She shoved it away and struggled back to her feet.

Joel stood at the fence separating the hog pen from the breezeway. A grayish-white residue was visible in his hair and on his forehead, on his throat and shirt, but he’d wiped his mouth clear. His glasses, now smeared, had protected his eyes from the worst chemical blast. He held his gun in one hand, and Gro’s ale bowl—carelessly, by one carved cow head—in the other.

“Could you at least hold the bowl with both hands?” Chloe panted. One of the hogs butted her in the knee. She widened her stance.

Joel jerked his head like a dog trying to shed water. The fire retardant was probably irritating his skin. “Just shut
—up
.” He balanced the hand holding the gun on the top of the fence. The muzzle’s dark round hole looked huge.

Oh, God. If he shot her now, the damned hogs would eat her.

Chloe did not want to die in a hog pen. “You have the bowl,” she said. “Just go. Don’t make things worse.”

“You already made things worse.” Joel coughed, then spat some chemical residue. “I didn’t want any of this.”

“Then why are you here?” Chloe raised her voice to be heard over the hogs’ insistent squeals. “I don’t understand—”

“
Shut up!
” Joel snapped. His hand jerked. Chloe closed her eyes. And one of the Ossabaws slammed into her, knocking her to her knees.

No shot came. When Chloe looked up, the gun was still pointed at her. But Joel was looking over his shoulder, toward the farmyard.

Chloe shoved up from the ground with every ounce of strength, lunging for the gun. As she leapt, a sharp pain tore through her right thigh.

“Chloe!” The shout was distant—from perhaps the front of the house. A man’s voice.

Joel jerked the gun away just before Chloe landed on the bottom fence board. “Stay where you are!” he hissed. He ran to the front of the breezeway and pressed his body against the log wall.

“Chloe!” Louder now.

One of the hogs tore at Chloe’s shoe and she climbed high enough to straddle the top fence board. “Roelke, be careful!” she yelled. “He’s got a gun!”

“Shut up!” Joel snapped. He coughed again, then walked from the breezeway. “Stop right there! You take one more step and I kill her!”

The Ossabaw gave the fence one last angry smack before trotting away. Chloe’s heart was pounding, her chest heaving. Her leg was on fire.

But something unexpected glinted in her peripheral vision. A pair of sheep shears was hanging on the back wall of the stable. They were old-style, a curve of metal that ended in two heavy, sharp points. One of the farmers shearing sheep in the breezeway earlier that spring had probably hung them there over the hog pen, out of sight of curious young visitors, and forgotten them. Maybe,
maybe
, she could reach them.

____

Roelke’s nerves were taut when he edged around the back corner of the house. When he heard Chloe’s shouted warning, he pulled his gun.

A young man separated himself from the shadows of a log barn. “Stop right there!” he cried. “You take one more step and I kill her!” A wooden bowl dangled from his left hand. Something powdery on his face and chest gave him a weird, clownish appearance. But there was nothing clownish about the revolver in his other hand. The gun was pointed toward the ground.

Roelke froze, feet planted firm, both hands supporting his own revolver as he took aim. “Drop the gun!” he bellowed. “You raise that gun and I’ll shoot you in the head!
Drop it!”

The young man’s hand twitched. His finger was on the trigger. “Oh, God,” he said. “Oh, Jesus.”

Roelke was acutely aware of his own right finger, still pressed against his revolver’s barrel. But the guy didn’t aim. They stared at each other. Roelke felt every second pulsing by. This wasn’t working. Chloe was somewhere nearby. And because he had no business driving onto the Old World Wisconsin grounds, Roelke had not radioed his location in to dispatch.

“OK,” he said. “Let’s talk about this. Nobody needs to get hurt.” He edged a little closer. “Put the gun down. All you need to do is put the gun down.”

“Just—just shut
up
. Oh, God. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I—I have to think.”

Roelke took another tiny step. “Come on, buddy. Help me out. I’m trying to make things easier for you. Put the gun down.”

The young man stared down at the gun in his hand as if he didn’t know how it got there. He still held the barrel pointed down. But he shook his head with a last gasp of bravado. “I’ll only let Chloe go after you get in your car and drive away.”

Roelke’s nerves winched even tighter. “Keep me instead. They’ll give you whatever you want if you have a cop.”

The guy swallowed—he was close enough that Roelke saw the bob of his Adam’s apple. “Chloe,” the younger man called. “Come out here.”

“No!”
Roelke yelled. Too late. Chloe crept from the breezeway. Her face looked white. Black mud coated her hands and lower legs. The blood staining one thigh of her tan chinos was a rusty red.

Roelke’s anger crystallized into hot rage, sharp and clear. This bastard shot Chloe, he thought. I’m going to fucking plug him. “Chloe, get back behind the wall.”

“Don’t do it!” the guy cried. And Chloe stayed rooted where she was, about a yard behind and to the right of the assailant.

Roelke shoved down surging adrenalin. “You need to let Chloe walk away,” he said, edging still closer. “Look, I’ll put my gun away.” He forced himself to holster his revolver.