Heritage of Darkness (35 page)

whipped past, keening like—like …

Abruptly, she turned and slogged off the bridge. Skidding, slid-

ing, she started down the wooded hill towards the river, yelling

Roelke’s name and playing the beam back and forth. Twice she

stumbled. Once she fell. Her brain felt numb. All she knew to do

was keep going, keep yelling, keep looking.

When the light finally caught him, her knees almost gave way

with relief. Thank
God
.

296

But Roelke did not look good. He stood leaning against a tree,

head down. And his clothes were wet. “Roelke!” she cried.

He didn’t look up, just dragged one foot forward and planted

it.

She floundered ahead to meet him. “What
happened
?”

“Libby?” His voice was slurred. Libby was his cousin.

Confusion—an early warning sign of hypothermia. Chloe had

done her share of winter camping, and she tamped down panic

and let old training kick in. “Come on, Roelke. I’ll get you to the farm.” She ducked under his left arm, straightened, and almost

stumbled to her knees as his weight hit her shoulder. “I need your help. Come
on
!”

His violent shivers gave her hope. His body was still fighting,

still trying to keep warm. But it took an eternity to get Roelke back up the hill.

When they reached the car, he sagged against the trunk while

she wrenched the door open. She tugged off his sodden coat and

whipped off her own. Once she’d shoved him inside she draped

him with her dry down-filled parka and pointed the heater vents

his way.

Please don’t be stuck, she begged the Buick silently as she slid

behind the wheel. She eased her foot onto the gas. The car gave

one tentative lurch forward before sinking back again, rear wheels spinning. Dammit! She had to get Roelke to the farm,
now
.

“Sorry,” she said, “but I need the coats.” She scrambled out of

the car and jammed a coat beneath each of the back tires. When

she tried driving this time, rubber found nylon instead of snow.

The car heaved forward and kept going. Hallelujah.

297

Chloe jerked the car onto the road with just one tiny skid and

headed up Skyline Road. “Almost there,” she told Roelke. “We’ll be at Emil’s farm in five minutes.”

“C-cat litter,” he mumbled.

“What?”

“In the t-trunk. D-didn’t need to use our c-coats.”

“OK,” she said, blinking back tears. Of
course
Roelke McKenna had stowed emergency winter gear in the trunk before they set

out. “Next time I’ll know.”

She drove up the winding hill as fast as she dared. Her head-

lights caught the mailbox with
Bergsbakken
still partly visible beneath the snow. She turned in and saw faint tire marks angled to the barn, but no tracks between the road and the dark house. Since she wasn’t exactly sure where the drive was, she hoped for the best and plowed toward Emil’s home.

Once she cut the engine she could feel her heart thudding.

“We’re here,” she announced. “You still with me?”

He stirred. “Yeah.”

“I’ll come ’round and help you out.”

Getting Roelke up the hill had been hard. Getting him up the

front porch steps was harder. Fishing the key from his ice-crusted jeans pocket without him falling over was hardest of all. Chloe’s

teeth were chattering too by the time she got the door open and

guided him inside.

“Geez,” she exclaimed. She flipped a switch in the front hallway,

instinctively seeking light.

“What?” Roelke mumbled.

First things first. “Never mind. We’ve got to get you warmed

up.” She pulled him into the living room, shoved him down on the

298

sofa, and turned on another lamp. “Get your wet stuff off. I’ll go find dry clothes. Upstairs?”

He nodded “First d-door.”

She pounded up the narrow stairs. There was energy in the

house, stronger than usual, but she couldn’t make sense of it. She gritted her teeth against the quivering sensation in her sternum,

grabbed what she needed from Roelke’s suitcase, and pounded

back downstairs.

Roelke was still fumbling with his flannel shirt.

“Let me.” She knocked his hands away, ripped open the but-

tons, roughly jerked off the shirt, and dried his chest and arms

with a towel. “What
happened
?”

“S-some idiot hit the b-bridge too fast,” Roelke managed.

“Skidded. It was either g-get squashed or g-go over.”

“Dear God!”

“The river’s only waist-deep, but I probably w-would have fro-

zen or drowned if I hadn’t stumbled into a fallen t-tree. I m-man-

aged to crawl onto the t-trunk.”

The mental picture made Chloe’s heart constrict. He’s OK, she

reminded herself. He’s OK. She buttoned him into a dry wool shirt

and pulled a thick sweater on over that. “Better?”

“Much.”

Chloe crouched at Roelke’s feet and tugged off soaking boots

and socks. She didn’t see any sign of frostbite on his toes, thank God. Then she reached for the zipper on his jeans.

“Chloe?” he said. “I th-thought you weren’t r-ready for this.”

A hiccup of hysteria popped out. “Roelke …”

With an obvious effort he pushed up from the sofa. “Go away. I

can do it.”

299

Chloe stood and turned her back. Unoccupied, the emotive

energy lingering in the house struck her again. It was still difficult to sort through the jumble. Hope … happiness … something dark,

too. Normal for any old house, she reminded herself. Maybe her

anxiety was increasing her reception.

“You need help?” she called over her shoulder.

“No.” Roelke’s voice was blessedly stronger already. “Did you

bring socks down?”

“I—um—no. I will.” She dashed back up the stairs.
Something

in Emil Bergsbakken’s house was off-kilter. That sense was stron-

ger on the second floor. But all that really mattered right now was making sure that Roelke was truly all right.

Back downstairs, she threw the socks at him. “Put all the socks

on, one over another. We’re leaving.”

Roelke looked bewildered. “I was hoping you’d make some hot

tea.”

“I want a doctor to check you out.”

“I don’t need—”

“I don’t care what you think you don’t need. We’re going back

to Decorah.”

He tugged on three layers of socks while she pulled the sodden

wool liners from his boots and tossed them aside. When he

jammed his feet into the boots, she laced them up tightly. “You

better stay inside until I’m sure I can get the car turned around,”

she advised. Maybe careening blindly through the snow hadn’t

been the best idea after all.

Chloe ran back into the night. The cold air stole her breath.

Was she being wise, or reckless? Maybe all Roelke really needed

was a warm bath and hot tea …

300

She hesitated, shivering. Emil’s farm felt many miles removed

from Decorah—from anyone. Except for the lamps she’d turned

on inside, she couldn’t see a single light. Driving snow stung her cheeks. Ice-slick tree branches rattled.

And the wind shrieked down the hill with a wild fury that

might, just might, hold unearthly laughter. Chloe froze with the

same icy terror that must have seized her ancestors on restless winter nights centuries ago.

Then a blazing fury seared up inside. She planted both boots

and faced the night sky. “The hell with you!” she howled back. “We are
leaving
!”

Ten minutes later she had the car turned around, the heater

blasting, and Roelke wrapped in an old wool granny-square

afghan and buckled in. “I was kinda in a hurry when we got here,”

she reminded him. “Hold on.” They had to crest a rise to get back

to the road, and she hit the gas.

“Jesus, Chloe!” Roelke braced himself as the car crowned the

hill and skidded sideways onto the road.

“We’re fine,” she said, once she’d gotten the sedan pointed in

the right direction. She didn’t care if they slid all the way back to Decorah. She craved people. She craved lights.

Roelke took a deep breath. “What are you doing here, anyway?

How did you find me?”

“I came looking. I wanted to tell you about this weird calendar

stick I found. There’s no identification number on it, and I have

no idea why it was in the storage building, but it gave me the willies, and …” They’d reached the bridge and she stopped talking

until she’d safely crossed.

“And?” he prompted.

301

“Roelke, under the black paint I found a some symbols and

these stick figures, each one with an initial and a cross. I assumed they represented saints, so at first I didn’t pay much attention to the initials. But—I know this sounds crazy—there’s a darkness

embedded in that piece.”

“What do you mean?”

“What if someone made that calendar stick as a record of peo-

ple he or she has harmed in some way?”

“Who?”

“It could have been Emil. He’s a carver, and he probably could

have gotten his hands on a key. The carving is primitive, though.”

“Emil’s a possibility,” Roelke said, “but not likely. None of the

carvings I’ve seen have paint on them, and I don’t know if he has it in him to do anything you’d call primitive. Maybe Tom Rimestad

made the stick.”

“It would have been much harder for him to come by a Vester-

heim key.” Chloe paused at corner while a snow plow lumbered

past. “Although—he is a Board member.”

“So it wouldn’t have been impossible.”

“No.” She eased through the intersection. “Or, maybe Howard

carved it. He could get into the storage building any time he

wanted to.”

Roelke held his hands in front of the air vent. “Why would

Hoff make a calendar stick like that and plant it on a shelf among the old stuff?”

“I have no idea,” Chloe admitted. “But think about it. Howard’s

the one person with access to everything. He could have carved the little wooden goats and left the message tubes on Sigrid’s porch

and in Emil’s door. Howard could have set the fire in the class-

302

room that night, and then pretended to arrive and be the hero.

And the night we arrived, he was acting very nervous even before

we found Petra Lekstrom’s body in that trunk, remember?”

“We do know that Hoff had motive to attack Lekstrom,” Roelke

admitted. “And there’s one more thing.”

“What?”

“I found a plate of solid metal earlier this evening blocking the

ventilation pipe leading from Adelle Rimestad’s workshop.”

Something sick and frightening pooled in Chloe’s belly as she

took that in. “Phyllis Hoff and Petra Lekstrom are dead,” she said.

“Adelle is quite ill. We know Lavinia’s safe in the hospital tonight, but—oh God, Roelke, what about Sigrid and my mom?”

Roelke was silent.

“Mom got locked in the vault. That threatening
budstikke

could have been intended for her, and the fire in the classroom

almost certainly was.” Chloe squeezed the steering wheel, fighting panic. “Are you doing OK?”

“I am,” he said firmly.

Chloe thought about the maniacal
julebukker
who’d thrown

her down the hill and felt the temperature drop a few degrees. “I’m stopping at Vesterheim. I want to find my mother.”

They arrived back at the museum block ten minutes before

closing time, but the grounds appeared deserted. Chloe parked on

Mechanic Street near the collections storage building. “Why down

here?” Roelke asked.

“My mom was working in the Valdres House—” Chloe

pointed, although the house above was invisible in the snowy

darkness—“and I want to make sure she didn’t slip and fall down

the drop-off. You can stay in here with the heater on.”

303

“No way.” Roelke got out of the car.

She didn’t argue. He put one arm around her shoulders as they

trudged through the snow toward the bottom of the steep hill, and

she didn’t argue with that either. He’d also taken charge of the

flashlight again, playing it over the hill, the ground at the bottom.

There was no sign that Mom or anyone else had tumbled down

the rise—or been slammed into the house’s stone foundation.

“Let’s go ’round and make our way to the top of the hill,” Chloe

said. “Maybe Mom’s still inside the Valdres house, happily making

waffles.”

It took several minutes to wind through the Open Air area.

Across Mill Street, light glowed from the windows of Bethania

Lutheran Church as concert-goers straggled up the steps. The

main museum grounds were quiet, though, with only a few sput-

tering torches casting wildly flickering shadows on the snow.

As Chloe and Roelke approached the Valdres House, a caped

woman emerged from the small enclosed entryway. For three sec-

onds Chloe felt relieved and foolish. She
had
been letting her imagination run wild. Mom was fine.

Then Chloe recognized Sigrid, and anxiety roared back.

“Chloe!” Sigrid met them on the path. “Do you know where

your mother is? We were going to meet Howard here so we could

all go over to the concert together, but the house is locked.” Sigrid spread her hands, looking bewildered. “There’s no sign of either of them.”

304

thirty-two

No sign of either of them. No sign of either of them.
Chloe squeezed Roelke’s hand.

“Sigrid, go wait inside the church,” he said in his
You will do
what I say
cop tone. “We’ll find Marit and Howard and join you.”