Heritage of Darkness (13 page)

one to share the load.

100

Which reminded her that at her worst moments in the past six

months, she’d
had
someone to help shoulder the load. Someone who gladly would, if she let him, take her burdens on altogether.

She’d never let him do it. But it was pretty darn nice that he

wanted to.

Chloe headed for the stairwell. She regretted the spitting match

she’d shared with her mother that morning, and was even sorrier

that she’d snapped at Roelke. I have some humble pie on the

menu, she thought, and indulged in a sigh of profound resigna-

tion.

In her rosemaling classroom, Chloe’s fellow students were

silently bent over their work—work that had progressed far, far

beyond where they’d been the day before. Mom looked at Chloe

with raised eyebrows:
So nice of you to join us.

And I used a week of vacation for this, Chloe thought. She set-

tled down to paint.



“At the bottom of this long triangle, you want the point of the

knife to reach the center,” Emil said. “See how I do that?”

When the master carver demonstrated a technique, Roelke

never knew if he should watch with complete attention or take

notes. Watch, he decided now. If need be he could ask Emil ques-

tions later.

“You don’t want this cut to get too deep,” Emil continued.

“Straighten the blade gradually, and bring the tip—”

“God Jul!”
several adolescent boys hollered from the hall.

Wham!
The heavy classroom door slammed shut.

101

“Oh!” Lavinia gasped. Roelke jumped.

Emil jumped too. His blade dug a gouge into the wood. He

slammed down his practice board with what could only be an

impressive Norwegian curse. Then he stamped across the floor,

jerked open the door, and shook his fist—actually shook his fist,

Roelke observed; you didn’t see that too often—after the miscre-

ants. “Stop with your pranks!” Emil shouted. “We’re working with

sharp knives in here! You try that again and I’ll turn every one of you over my knee!”

It was the threat that broke the tension. One of Emil’s students

sniggered. Roelke coughed to hid a smile. As Emil turned back

toward the classroom the anger left his shoulders, and he grinned

sheepishly. “I could do it, too,” he said. “Now. I’ll show you how to fix a mistake.”

When the demonstration was complete, the students tried the

new pattern. Roelke worked carefully, fascinated by the emerging

design. Not bad, he thought. Not bad at all.

Lavinia, his tablemate, nodded with a knowing smile. “It’s

addictive, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Roelke admitted.

“Carving has filled a lot of pleasant hours since my husband

died. The funny thing is, I didn’t like geometry in school.” Lavinia reached for her can of ginger ale and raised it in a salute before taking a sip. “Now, I can’t get enough of it. The possibilities are endless.”

Roelke ran a finger over his work. Geometry … maybe that was

it. His cousin Libby had called him “rigid” more than once. He

preferred “meticulous.” Either way, the precision of chip carving

appealed to him.

102

Lavinia cocked her head toward two of their fellow students.

“And that father-son team—isn’t it wonderful that they’re taking

the class together?”

Roelke followed her gaze. The two men—one in his sixties, the

other perhaps twenty-five years younger—worked in companion-

able silence. Something twitched beneath Roelke’s ribcage.

Although his own father had introduced him to whittling, Roelke

couldn’t imagine his dad taking a class. His dad’s carving instructions to him and his brother had been pretty basic:
Don’t cut your
finger off, Patrick. You want to carve a bird, Roelke? Just carve away
everything that doesn’t look like a bird.
In his memory, Roelke heard his father laughing. But the laughter hadn’t been unkind, or the

drunken, derisive hoots that came later. Those carving sessions

were among the few good memories Roelke had of his father.

“Knives down,” Emil called from the front of the room. “We’re

going to talk about your first rosette.” He beamed with anticipa-

tion.

Roelke reached for his notebook and pen. He wanted to learn

how to design and carve rosettes. He wanted to design and carve

rosettes with, as Lavinia had observed earlier, stunning energy and symmetry.

And maybe, if Chloe played her cards right, he’d carve some-

thing special just for her.



Chloe watched the clock’s minute hand creep toward noon, poised

to bolt.
Yes—

103

“Remember,” Mom called, “I’d like everyone to finish the three

largest scrolls before going to lunch. We don’t want anyone to get farther behind.”

Chloe had not finished painting the three largest scrolls. She

didn’t care. She was going to go eat lunch with her … with her …

Darn it! She was going to lunch with Roelke.

Besides, Chloe thought, if I hear Mom use “remember” and the

royal “we” one more time, I will shriek.
Remember, please label and
date any snacks you leave in the refrigerator. We don’t want spoilage!

Remember, since linseed oil is flammable, any oily rags must go in the
red trash can, not the brown one. We don’t want to flirt with fire!

Remember, it’s important to arrive promptly, and be ready to work at
the designated hour. We don’t want to cause delays for other students!

Chloe was pretty sure that last one was aimed at her. Since

Mom had volunteered her for extra errands and activities, that

really didn’t seem fair.

Roelke wasn’t in the lounge, so she trotted down the steps and

headed toward his classroom. When she got to the doorway, her

feet stopped moving. Roelke was intent on his work—board held

on his lap with his left hand, and knife held in his right—and there was something about him, something … different.

Finally it came to her. He’s totally relaxed, she thought in

amazement. Roelke McKenna usually moved through life coiled

and ready to spring. He loved his cousin Libby’s kids, and she’d

seen him playing with them, laughing, tussling—but he was pro-

tective of them too, always on alert for any possible hazard or

threat.

And he’s the same way with me, Chloe realized, with a poi-

gnant pang. She didn’t want Roelke on alert when they were

104

together. She’d have to think about what she might be able to do

about that.

“Miss Ellefson.” Emil beckoned her into the room.

“Hey!” Roelke looked up, blinked, smiled. “Sorry. I didn’t real-

ize it was lunchtime.”

“No problem.”

Emil stepped closer. “Howard says you’ll go with us to collec-

tions storage tomorrow afternoon.
Ja?
”

“
Ja
. My pleasure.”

“Good, good.” He nodded and returned to the chalkboard.

Roelke put his knife in a protective case and his board on the

table. So simple, Chloe thought wistfully. Oil paints had to be cod-dled like cranky infants.

“See you later, Emil,” Roelke called. He grabbed his coat.

In the hall Chloe said, “Sorry about this morning. Are we

good?”

He smiled. “We’re good.”

They left the building. “Since we met for breakfast at such an

ungodly hour, I didn’t get lunches made,” Chloe said. “Want to go

to the Oneota Co-op? Lots of organic food, locally produced.”

Roelke approved that suggestion, and they set out on the short

walk down Water Street. Snow had started to fall, and the sound of shovels scraping pavement collided with the Christmas carols

piped from one of the shops. “Gotta stay ahead of it,” one man

said, tossing a bladeful of powder onto a three-foot pile.

Chloe navigated around the drift. “So,” she told Roelke, “I got

quite the earful from Howard this morning.”

“Yeah?”

105

She told him about the museum director’s litany of troubles.

“This is a small institution to confront that much of a financial

obligation,” she concluded.

“The museum will end the year $500,000 in debt?”

“Yeah. Can you imagine how fast interest payments on that

rack up?”

Roelke whistled. “Pretty fast. Sounds like a downward spiral.”

“I really feel sorry for Howard. Middle management ain’t

always fun, but he’s clearly lonely at the top.”

“This accreditation thing—it’s a big deal?” Roelke asked. As

they reached a corner he stepped from the sidewalk, then back

onto the curb as the crossing light changed. Officer Roelke McK-

enna was not one to walk against a light. “Can’t he just put off the inspection?”

“It would look bad,” Chloe said. “And a delay could be the same

thing as losing accreditation.”

“So?”

“So, being recognized by the American Association of Muse-

ums is proof that Vesterheim is meeting the highest standards of

professional excellence, in every way. It’s not just about … yikes.”

She was diverted by a window display of Cabbage Patch dolls,

cheerfully if incongruously attired in Norwegian folk costume.”

She struggled to recapture her thought. “It’s not just about brag-

ging rights. Being accredited can make a big difference to granting agencies and wealthy donors.”

“Which Hoff needs right now.”

“Big time.”

The light changed again. Roelke grabbed her hand as they

walked the last stretch. Chloe liked the way her mittened hand fit 106

into his gloved one, as if the strength in his fingers were enough to ward away all the bad stuff. As they reached the Co-op, she briefly let her head rest against his shoulder. “Let’s take a break from talking about Petra’s murder and Howard’s problems, OK?”

“Sure,” he agreed. But his eyes were narrowed, and his voice

sounded far away. She could tell his mind was still turning over

this new information, examining it from all angles, seeing where it might fit. And she was pretty sure that as soon as they settled down for lunch, he’d whip out a stack of index cards and start making

notes.

107

twelve

Food at the Co-op was so good that Chloe returned to the Edu-

cation Center with renewed resolve. “Looks good,” she called to

the volunteers adorning a Christmas tree with straw ornaments.

One of the women eyed them with a sly smile. “Did you know

that straw figures once symbolized fertility?”

It’s a freaking conspiracy, Chloe thought. She kissed Roelke

quickly and fled without catching his eye.

Back in the classroom, she began work on the motif she’d been

instructed to complete before lunch. In an effort to make nice, she carried her tray to the front of the room. “Mom, where should my

brush be to start this scroll?”

“One brush edge faces 11:00. Turn it to 1:00 and curve out,

down, back in.” Mom briskly demonstrated the stroke on a scrap

piece of tag board.

“Thanks,” Chloe said, and returned to her seat to try the

sequence herself. Moments later she sat back and sighed. “My

scroll looks like a pregnant grandfather clock.”

108

Gwen, who had finished
all
her scrolls, big and small, chuckled.

“It just takes practice.”

Chloe ground her teeth, dipped her brush into the blob of red

on her palette, and bent back over her tray. I will persevere, she vowed grimly.

She was so intent on gritting through that she didn’t notice a

fellow student standing at her shoulder until the young woman

cleared her throat. Chloe’s paintbrush made an unexpected detour.

“Oh, sorry!” the other student whispered, peering anxiously

from beneath a heavy fringe of bangs that needed trimming so

badly that Chloe’s hand twitched involuntarily toward her scissors.

“I didn’t mean to spoil—”

“You didn’t,” Chloe assured her.

“Do you know where your mother is?”

Chloe instinctively scanned the classroom, as if this earnest

woman had somehow missed a five-foot-eight instructor. No

Mom.

“She went to get an example of transparent Telemark,” Miss

Long Bangs said. “But she’s been gone for a long time.”

Chloe put her brush aside. “I’ll find her,” she promised,

although since she had no idea what transparent Telemark was,

she had no idea where to look.

The student lounge was empty. So was the ladies’ room. Out of

ideas, Chloe tiptoed into the other classroom—and gaped at

shelves full of finished bowls, platters, porridge containers, even a baby cradle.

Sigrid joined her. “My students are doing really fine work,” she

murmured happily.

109

“They’ve done all this in a day and a half?” Chloe squawked.

Sure, this was an advanced class, but—holy cow. She couldn’t even

imagine
doing such work so quickly. She couldn’t imagine doing such work ever, period.

“I’m glad you’re inspired, my dear,” Sigrid said, patting Chloe’s

hand affectionately.

Back to business. “Aunt Sigrid, have you seen my mom? She

went to fetch an example of transparent Telemark …?”

“She’s not back yet?” The smile faded from Sigrid’s face.

“Back from where?”

Sigrid clutched Chloe’s wrist and towed her into the hall.

“From the vault.”

“There’s a vault?”

“There’s an old vault in the museum basement, probably left