Close to the Heel (11 page)

“Baldur was upset with all these accusations. Who wouldn't be? The police came several times to question him. People were talking. They said the most hateful things—how much he'd changed since he'd sold his quota, how he was throwing money around, how he liked to hobnob with wealthy foreigners. He was hurt and angry when he heard that. And he saw how upset Rakel was when she came home from school. Then he disappeared.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, he called me one day to say that he would be late coming home because he had errands to run, and that was the last I heard of him.”

“He didn't come home?”

“He didn't come home. He didn't call again. He disappeared. His car was found behind a warehouse down at the port.”

“Did you contact the police?”

She nodded grimly. “They looked for him. They contacted all his friends and business associates. No one had heard from him since. They checked ships' manifests. They checked with the airlines.

There was no record of him leaving the country.”

“He just vanished into thin air?”

“The rumors started to fly again. It wouldn't surprise me if Einar started them. Everyone was saying that maybe it was true that Gudrun was on to something. Maybe Baldur was no better than a criminal, and maybe his criminal friends smuggled him out of the country on a boat. Other people, people I thought were my friends, said maybe he had decided to leave me for someone younger, one of the girls from the clubs where he used to meet the Russians to do business. But Baldur wasn't like that. He was a good man. He just wanted something better for his family.”

And now for the big question.

“What do you think happened to him, Freyja?”

“I think he's dead. I think Einar killed him.”

ELEVEN

I didn't know what to say. I mean, what do you say when someone tells you that your host, the man your life was going to depend on in a few days, murdered someone?

I finished my coffee—fast. When she pressed me to talk to Einar and Brynja, I suggested she go to the police.

“The police!” She snorted. “Tryggvi knew my Baldur when they were boys. But he thinks I can't see the truth about him, that I'm crazy. They all do. But I'm not. I'm not.” She got so worked up that she spilled her coffee.

I stood up and thanked her. I didn't know what else to say. I just knew I wanted to get out of there.

She followed me down the stairs, even though I told her she didn't have to bother and that I could see myself out. The whole time, she kept telling me that she wasn't crazy and that it was Einar who was the killer, not her husband. I was glad when I was finally out the door. And don't you know it, I had just stepped out onto the street when a familiar-looking
SUV
slid by.

Einar.

He frowned at me as he sailed by.

I pulled away from Freyja's house with no destination in mind. Mostly I just wanted to put as much distance as possible between her and me. She could say she wasn't crazy until she was blue in the face, but that didn't make it so. I mean, if her husband had been murdered, the cops would know about it. They wouldn't treat her as if she was delusional. And, really, if old Baldur had been doing business with so-called Russian businessmen who were really Russian gangsters, well, call
me
crazy, but wasn't it far more likely that they were the ones who had bumped him off, not some Icelandic tour guide? After all, according to Tryggvi, people didn't kill people in Iceland very often. I knew that handguns were illegal here. Icelandic cops didn't even carry them. And, anyway, look at the facts. Baldur had taken out a huge loan. Everything had gone bust—there'd been a massive economic meltdown that had started in the States and spread from there. Whole countries were going bankrupt. I have no idea what people do when they've lost everything. But I was willing to bet that some of them took a flier—ran from it all, put their miserable pasts behind them and made a fresh start somewhere else. Why was it so hard to believe that Baldur had done that?

I did a U-turn and headed back to the tourist information center. It was open but nearly deserted. The girl at the counter, who was gazing blankly out the window when I walked in, immediately brightened.

“How can I help you?” she asked. She was blond and blue-eyed, like most Icelanders I had met. She was also gorgeous, with a nice body and full pink lips. She looked about my age.

“I'd like directions to a place called Barnafoss,” I said, stumbling over the word. I was pretty sure that was what Freyja had called it. “It's a waterfall. It's supposed to be somewhere near here.”

The girl notched up her already bright smile.

“Where the children fell in and died,” she said.

For a country with a supposedly low murder rate, an awful lot of people seemed to die terrible deaths.

“Barnafoss,” she said sweetly. “It means Children's Waterfall. It got its name from two boys who lived at Hraunsas, a farm near there. One day their parents left the two boys at home while they went to church. But the boys had nothing to do, so they decided to follow their parents—”

I was guessing they must have been bored out of their skulls if the only thing they could think of to do was follow their parents to church. But that's just me.

“They took a shortcut,” she said. “There used to be a stone bridge over the waterfall.”

“Used to be?”

Her smile was dazzling.

“The boys got dizzy crossing the stone bridge. They fell into the water and drowned. When their mother found out what had happened, she put a spell on the bridge. A little while after that, there was an earthquake and the bridge collapsed.” She reached under the counter and pulled out a map of the area. “It's a popular tourist attraction,” she said. Whatever turns your crank, I guess. “Now…” She drew a red line on the map to show me how to get from the tourist center to the falls.

“It's easy to get to,” she said. “It's very close.”

“I heard a woman drowned there a year ago,” I said.

“Yes, that's true.”

“Does that happen often—people falling over the falls?”

“Hardly ever.” She paused. “Although sometimes a tourist gets a little too close to the edge and slips, even though they are told to be careful. But as far as I know, none of them have drowned.”

“What do you think happened to the woman who drowned?” I asked. “Did she get too close to the edge? Or do you think it had something to do with the spell that woman put on the bridge? Am I going to be in danger if I go up there?”

There was that megawatt smile again.

“If you are careful, you should be fine. The area is clearly marked and there are chains that keep people from going too close.”

Chains? “Are they new?”

“New?”

“Did they put them up after that woman drowned?”

“No. They've been there for a long time.”

“So what happened to her? Was she some crazy tourist who hopped over the chain to take a picture or something?” Yeah, I knew she wasn't. But I wanted to know what
she
knew.

“She was a reporter,” the girl said. “She lived near here.”

“Did she have some kind of medical condition? Did she faint or something?”

The girl leaned across the counter and dropped her voice, even though we were the only two people in the place.

“I heard she jumped.”

“Suicide?”

“That's what I heard. She was having some troubles in her marriage, and she killed herself.”

“Boy, I didn't hear that. Someone just mentioned that a woman had drowned. I thought it must have been an accident.”

“It wasn't ruled an accident. They called it
Undetermined
. I heard that's because the family—the husband—talked the police and the coroner into ruling it that way because he wanted to spare the woman's grandfather the grief of knowing that his only granddaughter took her own life. It's a family that has had a lot of tragedies.”

So I'd heard.

“At first the husband claimed that his wife had been murdered. It was quite a scandal around here. But I heard the police weren't able to find any evidence. That's why they ruled the death undetermined. The daughter was in my school. I didn't know her well—she was a year behind me.”

“What does
she
think happened to her mother?”

“Murder.” She shook her head. “She claimed her mother was murdered. She talked about it all the time. She even accused another girl's father of being the murderer. It was awful. In the end, she had some kind of breakdown and left school. She hasn't gone back. The girl whose father she accused was so upset that she moved to Denmark.”

“And what about you? What do you think happened?”

She shrugged. “Suicide. Definitely suicide. I'd kill myself if I was married to a man like Einar.”

“Oh?”

She glanced around again and dropped her voice even lower.

“He wanted her to stay home all day and cook and clean. He didn't want her to work for that newspaper. Me—I have plans for my life. I'm going to study fashion design. I'm going to have a career. I'm not going to stay in this miserable country for the rest of my life, and I'm certainly not going to dedicate my life to cooking and cleaning for a man—especially not a tour guide.”

I picked up the map.

“Thanks for your help,” I said.

“Don't cross the chain markers and you'll be fine.” She flashed me another smile. “My name is Jonina, by the way.” She made it sound like the prettiest name in the world. “I get off at seven this evening. In case you decide you want something a little more exciting to do.”

I thanked her again. She really was a knockout. She could have been a model, never mind fashion designer.

Jonina was right. Barnafoss wasn't far. When I got there, a bunch of tourists were trekking from it to their tour bus. The only vehicle around was a Jeep with a pretty girl at the wheel talking into a cell phone. I got out of the car and started for the falls. There was a clear path and guide chains everywhere, presumably to keep tourists away from the edge of the falls and the river.

I stopped at a large display board to read about the falls—it said pretty much what Jonina had told me. The trail branched in a couple of directions to allow different vantage points of the falls. I followed the one that led to the highest point. The terrain was rocky—all terrain in Iceland seemed to be rocky, but when I got up high enough, it changed from rough footing to enormous swirls, as if someone had poured liquid rock all over the ground and it had suddenly cooled. I'd never seen anything like it. I kept climbing, looking down at the rock all the way. When I got to where the chain was at the top, I stepped over it and kept going, drawn now by the head of the falls. I think that's why I didn't notice the figure at the very top, right near the edge of the rock overlooking the water, until it was too late.

She rose from where she had been sitting behind some scrubby growth.

“What are you doing here?” she demanded.

I almost fell backward when she jumped up like that.

“Jeez, you scared me,” I said.

“What are you doing here?”

Great. She was in one of those moods again—queen of the world taking her problems out on the lowly peasant boy.

“Seeing the sights,” I said. “Jonina at the tourist information center told me this place has quite a history. She gave me this.” I held up the map.

“Jonina!” Brynja snorted. “Is that
all
she gave you?”

Meow!

“What about you? What are you doing up here when your friend is waiting down there for you?” I asked.

“Johanna understands,” she said.

She sank back down and sat cross-legged on a huge swirl of rock and stared out over the raging torrent below. I looked down. It was a long drop into the water that swept almost immediately through several narrow, rocky channels before falling again over another enormous lip of rock. Freyja had said the body was bruised. If Gudrun had fallen from up here—or if she had jumped or been pushed—her body must have been more than bruised; it must have been battered.

“Aren't you freezing sitting on that rock?” I asked.

Brynja looked up at me in annoyance.

“Are you still here?” she said in a tone calculated to drive any normal person away. Too bad for her, I'm not a normal person. I have a pig head. At least, that's how the Major puts it. His English is terrific—except for some of the more idiomatic expressions. He doesn't cover all the bases; he covers them
up.
For him, things sell like pancakes, not hotcakes. You get the idea.

I sat down beside her. She moved sideways away from me.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I'm fine.” Snarl, snap.

“You don't seem fine. You look kinda…sad.” Yeah, that was it. “You look sad.”