Heritage of Darkness (31 page)

The wrestling mice effect was distracting. Chloe tried to focus.

“Classes end at three o’clock this afternoon,” Howard contin-

ued. “And our Norwegian Christmas Weekend officially begins at

four. I’m afraid the weather forecast is not promising …”

Sigrid filled the silence before it became uncomfortable. “It

would take more than snow to keep Norwegians indoors,” she

called. “And since the Christmas concert at Luther is this weekend, there are lots of visitors in town.”

“Yes. So … ahem.” Howard cleared his throat. “Thank you for

supporting Vesterheim. We are indeed a family here.”

A pretty troubled family at the moment, Chloe thought. How-

ard’s misery made her realize just how badly she wanted Petra’s

murderer to be caught before she and Mom and Roelke drove

away.

But time’s running out for that, she thought. Time is running

out fast.

262

twenty-eight

“Hey, that looks real good!” Emil leaned over Roelke’s shoul-

der late that morning, hands in his pockets, beaming his lepre-

chaun smile. “You must have stayed up late.”

Roelke considered his project with what he hoped was a critical

eye. “I really want to finish the carving today.”

“I think you will.” Emil moved on to look at Lavinia’s work.

Roelke felt a flush of pleasure. He was pleased with the way his

plate was turning out, and he had a plan for presenting the gift to Chloe. Some of it would depend on good luck, but this part was

under his control. He liked that.

After another student called Emil away, Roelke and Lavinia

worked in comfortable silence. The knife felt good in his hand. His design was emerging, tiny triangle by tiny triangle. Cut, cut, cut—

pop out the chip. Cut, cut, cut—pop out the chip. Right now, there was no need to think about all the world’s chaos. Right now, everything focused down to this ordered, controlled precision …

Lavinia put a hand against his arm.

263

“How’s it going?” he asked absently, testing the knife blade

against one thumb. He’d need to resharpen soon.

The hand turned into a talon. Roelke glanced up. Lavinia

stared at him, eyes wide, face white, mouth opening and closing

soundlessly. Her other hand clawed at her throat.

Jesus
. “Medical emergency here,” Roelke barked. “Emil, go

call—”

“I’m a doctor.” The older of the father-son team scrambled to

join them. “Retired from the Iowa Lutheran ER. Lavinia, are you

having trouble breathing?”

Lavinia’s breathing was audible and fast, but she gave a tiny

headshake:
No
. She reached for her pen and scrawled in her notebook:
Felt wood chip go down throat with ginger ale—breathing

OK—can’t talk.

Roelke glared at the offending can on the table. Emil, hovering

anxiously, muttered something inaudible.

“I suspect the chip got lodged in your larynx,” the doctor was

saying. “You’re going to be fine, but you need to go to the hospital.

I’ll drive you.”

“I’ll come too,” Emil said. “It’s almost noon. The rest of you—

take your lunch break.”

Roelke helped Lavinia into her coat. “See you later,” he said

firmly. She gave a shaky nod before letting the two men lead her

from the room.

The other students stared at each other. Then someone whis-

pered, “Thank God she’s going to be OK,” which snapped every-

one else from their horrified reverie.

Roelke looked at the son. “And thank God your dad was here.”

264

“He’s handy to have around,” the man agreed soberly. “Listen,

everyone, we were going to invite you all to Mabe’s for pizza today to celebrate such a wonderful class. I’d still like to take the rest of you out.”

The other students nodded, murmured appreciation, put

woodenware aside and began bundling up and filing toward the

door. “How scary for Lavinia,” one of the other students muttered.

“A freak accident like that.”

The son turned to Roelke. “You coming?”

“Sorry,” Roelke said. “I already had plans to meet someone.

Thanks, though.”

He waited until the hall was quiet. Then he sat back down,

knee pumping like a piston.
Had
Lavinia suffered a freak accident?

It would have been easy for someone to drop a wood chip into

Lavinia’s open can of ginger ale. Her fellow carvers had easy access, of course, but he couldn’t discount the possibility of someone else slipping in. They’d all taken a mid-morning break, and staff members and the occasional curious visitor sometimes wandered

through.

On the other hand, Lavinia did constantly have an open can of

soda on the table. Everyone was working like mad to get as much

done as possible before class ended. Chips had literally been flying.

Bottom line: he had no idea if he’d just witnessed the results of a devious attack or a bizarre accident.

Roelke stewed for another few moments without getting any-

where. He glanced over his shoulder—nobody around. Then he

reached into Lavinia’s overflowing totebag.

He was really, really sorry that Lavinia had swallowed a wood

chip. But the incident did provide the opportunity he’d been look-

265

ing for all week—ever since he’d glimpsed the words “Petra Lek-

strom” in Lavinia’s binder. He pulled out her huge three-ring

notebook, opened it to the first page, and began to read.



“Chloe, will you do me a favor?”

“Sure, Mom.” It was time for the lunch break, and Chloe hadn’t

accomplished much that morning anyway. The progress she’d

made on Wednesday night had ended when the fire started. She’d

marred her tray with a dropped brush loaded with crimson paint.

Her attempt to remove the unwanted streak had left a muddy blot.

“There’s a small bowl in the storage area I’d like to show this

afternoon, but with everyone working so hard to finish their

pieces … well,
most
people are trying to finish—”

“What do you need, Mom?”

“Could you fetch the bowl and bring it here? It would take too

much time to have the whole class go over to storage. I’d get it

myself, but Howard’s being
so
careful about having only museum professionals handle artifacts—”

“No problem.” Chloe flashed a chipper smile. Mom was pre-

tending that nothing unpleasant had happened at the Rimestads’

Christmas party. Chloe had pretty much decided to go with that.

She wiped what paint smears she could from her fingers with a

paper towel. The week was almost over, thank God. Mom was vol-

unteering this afternoon at the opening Christmas Weekend fes-

tivities. Tomorrow, Mom and Sigrid would demonstrate

rosemaling at the Gold Medalists’ table—without Violet, who does

not
have
a medal, Chloe thought with a petty stab of satisfaction.

266

And Sunday, she and Mom and Roelke would jump in the car and

get the heck out of Dodge. Yahoo.

She ate her cheese sandwich and carrot sticks while walking to

the collections storage facility, and unlocked the door with the key Howard had entrusted to her. Mom had given her both a description of the bowl and its accession number, and it didn’t take long to locate. Chloe found acid-free tissue, bubble wrap, and an appropriate box, and soon had the bowl well-packaged for its trip to the classroom.

She hesitated, once again struck with that delicious sense of

privileged access. I’m entitled to look around, she thought. How-

ard gave me the key. Roelke’s busy with cop stuff. And I am a cre-

dentialed professional.

She wandered the aisles, hands clasped behind her back. She

carefully avoided the immigrant trunks, but there were plenty of

other folk art treasures to admire.

Then she came to the aisle of wooden artifacts where she’d

seen the calendar sticks. As she slowly walked toward the far end, she once again felt
something
, something dark, emanating from one of the shelves. She stopped where the vibe was the strongest.

“Dagnabit,” she muttered. The not-knowing niggled at her. She

pulled on the cotton gloves she’d stuffed in her back pocket and

began touching pieces, one at a time. Not this spoon … not this

butter mold … definitely not the teething ring, which seemed to

give off a faint but identifiable sense of joy.

She moved on to the calendar sticks. No, no, …
bingo
. The

black one.

OK, this time she wouldn’t just walk away. The file on this par-

ticular piece might tell its story, but she wouldn’t know until she 267

checked. Chloe gently picked up the stick and carried it—feeling

something unpleasant pulsing into her palms—to a worktable

with better light.

Examination, however, left her baffled. She was no expert, but

she’d never seen a calendar stick completely coated in paint. And

the paint had been sloppily applied, in what looked like several

different layers.

“Of course it had to be black paint,” she muttered. “Winter,

darkness, blah, blah, blah.” The universe, if trying to impress her, clearly felt she needed a metaphor of utter simplicity.

The carver had created a decorative dragon head at one end,

and drilled a hole at the other end so the stick could be hung on a wall. Chloe ran a gloved finger over some of the symbols that represented either milestones in the agricultural year or saints’ days. It was impossible to get a good look through the thick paint.

She turned the stick over. Both sides were carved, which was

traditional—one side representing fall and winter, the other spring and summer. The allegory ended there, however, for the season of

long sunny days was also coated with unrelieved black.

“So, where’s your ID?” Chloe asked. Any museum piece got

marked, unobtrusively but indelibly, when it was purchased or

accepted from a donor. This
primstav
, however, had no accession number. And without the number, there was no way to find the

stick’s paper trail.

Chloe felt a moment of disappointment, followed by a sense of

relief. “I tried,” she told the stick, carrying it back to its place with both arms fully extended in front of her. “You’ll have to keep your unhappy story to yourself.”

268

After carefully locking the storage facility, Chloe took the bowl

back to the classroom. “Here you go,” she told Mom, who was

writing notes on the board. “Where’s everybody else? I figured

people would work through lunch, this being the last day and all.”

“I chased them out. Most of my students have been putting in

really long hours.”

Chloe ground her teeth. Was that a simple observation? It

didn’t feel like a simple observation. It felt like one more little barb, aimed for the heart and packaged with a calm smile.

And it was just one little barb too many. “Most of your stu-

dents … but not me, right? Isn’t that what you meant?”

Mom blinked. “I said what I meant, Chloe. But since you bring

it up … well, let’s just say that I’m disappointed that you haven’t seemed to appreciate class this week. I’m sure if Sigrid had taught this class as was planned, instead of—”

“
Mom!
This has nothing to do with Sigrid. It’s just that—well, rosemaling is supposed to be enjoyable, right? I haven’t gotten to the enjoyable part. I never seem to do anything right in your eyes.

You volunteer me for all kinds of errands, and then you criticize

me for being behind.” Chloe rubbed her forehead. “This is a begin-

ners’ class, Mom, but you act as if we’re all planning to enter our first pieces into competition.”

Two little spots of color had blossomed on Mom’s cheeks, and

her voice was clipped. “I’m trying to provide a foundation, Chloe.

My students can go in any direction they wish. I imagine that most will paint purely for pleasure, but two people in this class have

already told me that they hope to compete one day. They won’t get

anywhere—and none of you will understand your choices—if you

aren’t introduced to proper basic techniques from the start.”

269

“Well, maybe you should have given us more time to practice

those basics before jumping into a complicated project. I would

have appreciated more time to practice the basic strokes.”

“Perhaps,” Mom countered. “But I’ve seen students grow bored

and quit rosemaling altogether if too much time is spent practic-

ing brushwork. I try to empower beginning students by sending

them home with a piece they’re proud of.”

“I’m not proud of mine,” Chloe muttered, but she immediately

regretted it. Pull it together, she ordered herself. Telling Mom how you feel is acceptable. Whining like a petulant child is not.

Mom walked from the front of the room back to Chloe’s seat.

Then she pulled out Gwen’s empty chair and gave Chloe an
I’m

waiting
look. Chloe plodded over and dropped into the chair.

Mom picked up Chloe’s tray. “You haven’t done your line work

yet, Chloe. Perhaps you should finish the piece before declaring it a failure.”

That observation reminded Chloe uncomfortably of Roelke’s

remark about her being a quitter. In fact, he’d said much the same thing about choosing to fail. She opened her mouth, closed it

again. Evidently she was a slow learner on this point.

Her mother picked out the finest of her brushes, dipped the tip

in one of the blobs on Chloe’s palette, wiped off the excess. In