Heritage of Darkness (9 page)

“Let’s connect again tomorrow evening.” Moyer picked up a

stack of papers and tapped the already tidy edges on the desk:

We’re done here
.

“Sure,” Roelke said, and left.



63

After Roelke headed for the police station, Chloe lingered over her soda and reviewed the folklore project files. She was relieved to

find a well-organized plan and clear notes. The come-and-gone

curator had listed potential informants with a brief note about

topics that had emerged during preliminary contact. Most of them

had already been interviewed. Chloe considered the remaining

names and decided to start with a widow famous for her holiday

baking. The woman was known locally as “Bestemor Sabo”—

Grandmother Sabo. Can’t go wrong there, Chloe thought hope-

fully. She found a phone booth near the front door, called the

given number, and received a warm welcome to visit that evening.

After hanging up Chloe fished a fistful of change from her wal-

let and dialed a familiar number. “Ethan?”

“Chloe? That you?”

Chloe smiled. Her best friend Ethan, who worked for the US

Forest Service, lived in Idaho. Just hearing his voice made her feel good. “It’s me. I’m in Decorah with my mom and Roelke.”

“How’s it going?”

“My mom ended up teaching my rosemaling class. It’s a long

story—” and one she did not want to go into at long-distance

rates—“but basically I can do no right in her eyes.”

Ethan’s voice was low, sympathetic. “Sorry it’s not going better.

You did good to suggest the trip, though. Family’s worth holding

onto.”

Chloe bit her lip. Ethan’s parents had not handled well his

coming out as a gay man. Chloe knew how much the estrange-

ment hurt him. I should remember that, she thought. At least

Mom still considers me part of the family.

64

“I’ll keep trying,” she told Ethan with dogged resolve. “I prom-

ise.”

“How are things going with Roelke? First family adventure and

all?”

Chloe considered. “Well,
he’s
bonding with Mom.”

“That’s good, right?”

“I guess so. Mom keeps wafting into tales of Norwegian court-

ship and marriage, which makes me want to bury myself in the

nearest snow drift, but Roelke seems to be taking it in stride.” A noisy group of teens burst through the door to Mabe’s. Chloe

pressed the receiver harder against her ear, plugged her other ear with a finger, and turned her back. “And he seems to be doing OK

with his carving class. I wish I’d signed up for that one.” She

sighed. “Remember back in forestry school when we used to quiz

each other on tree identification with those blocks of wood? I do

love all the visual variety.”

Ethan laughed. “Me too.”

“Softwood trees, hardwood trees, I love ‘em all. Remember that

time when we got presented with a piece of diseased wood at the

mid-term?”

“Yeah,” Ethan said. “It was so beautiful that as soon as the exam

was over I begged the prof to let me take it home. I made a cook-

book shelf for my mom with it. She loved it. Of course that was

before …” His voice trailed away.

Shit, Chloe thought. She was not doing well by her friend

today. That’s what came of being self-absorbed with her own

problems. “Well, you can make me a cookbook shelf for Christ-

mas,” she said. “Out of any kind of wood. I’d treasure it.”

65

“Only if you bake something for me from one of those cook-

books. Chris is a pretty good cook, but neither one of us does well in the baking department.”

“Will do,” she promised. And speaking of baking, she thought,

I need to go see what Bestemor Sabo wants to share.

66

eight

After leaving the police station Roelke got his bearings,

hunched his shoulders, and struck out briskly for Emil’s place. The sidewalks were mostly clear of snow and ice. The worst bit was

crossing over the Upper Iowa River. The single-lane bridge had an

impressive double arrangement of angular iron trusses, but no

sidewalk and nothing to shield him from the wind.

Emil lived less than a mile beyond the river on an old farm

tucked beneath a bluff on Skyline Road. The frame house was

small, and the barn where Emil kept chickens and milked a couple

of cows was small too. There were also a couple of other outbuild-

ings, a little pasture, and a narrow field where he probably raised hay.

Roelke let himself into the house, pulled off his boots, and left

them on the mat. He liked things tidy. Besides, Emil’s place was

immaculate.

“You’re back!” Emil called from the living room, where he was

settled with a knife and practice board. “Want a beer?”

67

“I’d rather something hot,” Roelke admitted. “If you’ve got it,”

“There’s tea in a canister by the stove.”

“Thanks.” Roelke watched Emil make a short, quick stroke.

“After teaching us all-thumbs students today, aren’t you ready for a break?”

“I’m trying a new design. If I like it, I’ll show you all tomor-

row.” Emil paused, shrugged, and made another cut. “Carving

makes me feel good.”

Then you must feel good all the time, Roelke thought as he

headed into the kitchen. The furniture in Emil’s house was decades old—not antique, just outdated—but that didn’t matter because

the man’s carvings took the spotlight. Wooden spoons, plates,

bowls, boxes, shelves, clocks, tables, chairs, and a variety of items Roelke didn’t even recognize were
everywhere
. Many designs included rosettes—he now knew that rosettes were circular

designs—while others featured straight lines and hundreds of tiny

triangles, carved in patterns that always,
always
, seemed perfectly suited to the object itself.

Roelke filled the kettle and turned on the burner. He studied

the kitchen idly while waiting. The toaster looked twenty years old, the stove thirty, the fridge maybe forty. The room was purely functional—no curtains at the window, no cookie jar on the counter,

no well-thumbed cookbooks on a shelf.

Then Roelke noticed a big crock on the floor. It held a few stray

kitchen tools that, to his unprofessional eye, must have passed

from old to antique a ways back. One was a big, grooved rolling

pin.

68

“Hey Emil, is this a
lefse
pin you’ve got here?” he called, hefting the pin. It was heavy—four pounds, maybe five. He carried the pin

into the living room.

“
Ja
.” Emil’s face clouded with sorrow. “That was my
mor’s
. My mother’s. She died when I was just a boy. Why are you wondering?”

“Just curious,” Roelke said mildly, reminding himself that the

pin found beneath Petra’s body was not common knowledge.

“What is
lefse
, anyway?”

“Flatbread. Made with potatoes.”

Roelke contemplated the pin. “What are the grooves for?”

“I don’t know. You better ask one of the women at Vesterheim.

Any good Norwegian woman knows how to make
lefse
.” Emil’s

voice was husky. “My
mor
, she spread warm
lefse
with butter and a little brown sugar. Now, that was good eating.”

Roelke was sorry that he’d triggered sad memories. His own

mother was dead too, and he knew how bittersweet reminiscing

could be. “I think I hear the kettle,” he said, and retreated back to the kitchen.

The tea was hard-core, so Roelke made do by only dipping the

bag a few times. Then he carried the steaming mug into the living

room and settled down where he could watch his host work. He

waited until Emil paused, wiping his design with a cloth to remove any stray bits of wood, before asking, “Did you learn to carve as a boy?”

“Oh,
ja
.” Emil pronounced the affirmation as
yawh
. “My father was a good carver. All the men were, back in the old days. In Norway, you know, everything was made of wood—tools, kitchen

69

utensils, furniture, houses.” Emil pointed to an oval lidded box.

“My grandfather made that, back in the old country.”

I have to get Chloe out here, Roelke thought. This place is a

museum itself. “Have you always concentrated on chip carving?”

“Pretty much. Some of them carvers, they need a big work

bench and big tools. Lots of equipment, lots of fuss. You get that complicated, and all of a sudden you got to worry about ventilation and noise and not cutting your hand off with a power saw. All I need is a couple of knives, a ruler and compass, and a pencil. I like things simple.”

Roelke nodded.

Emil pointed again. “That bowl there? My brother Oscar did

that one. Oscar, he was one good carver.”

“Oscar has passed away?”

“Last spring.” Emil returned to his work. “A heart attack, they

said it was.”

“I’m sorry,” Roelke said.

“Maybe he’ll be back soon,” Emil said. “The old Norwegians

believe the souls of family members who died come back at

Christmastime, you know.”

“I didn’t know, actually.” Roelke waited to see if the older man

was speaking in jest, but Emil went back to his work.

Roelke glanced around the room. No television. Just a few

books and a basket holding old issues of
National Geographic
. It was a good thing Emil was so involved at Vesterheim, because otherwise he’d live a very lonely life.

Well, he didn’t want to dwell on that. “I really enjoyed class

today.”

Emil smiled. “You did good.”

70

Roelke leaned back in his chair and sipped the tea, feeling

ridiculously pleased. Dad used to say that, he thought suddenly.

Didn’t he? Roelke tried to remember. Back when he was little,

before his father’s boozing got out of control. Once or twice at

peewee baseball games, when Roelke had made a good catch or hit

a long drive. “You did good,” his dad would say. Then he’d pull

Roelke’s cap off and smack him on the butt with it, laughing.

Roelke had never understood the butt-smacking part, but the rest

had made him stand tall for the rest of the day. If only …

He suddenly realized that his left knee was jiggling up and

down. He shoved all the ‘if onlies’ back into a box in his brain.

“Emil, you must have known Petra Lekstrom, right?”

“Sure.” Emil moved his shoulders up and down. “She lived over

the border, but she came down to Decorah all the time.”

Roelke understood that “over the border” meant southern

Minnesota. “What was she like?”

Emil finished another triangle before responding. “She was a

real piece of work.”

“Yeah?” Roelke sipped his tea. He could feel its heat slid down

through his chest, dispelling the last chill. “How so?”

It took Emil a few moments to answer. Roelke couldn’t tell if he

was trying to choose his words carefully, or waiting until he

reached a good stopping point in his work. “There was this one

time,” the carver said finally, “maybe … five, six years ago, when she was taking some class upstairs and I was teaching one downstairs. All of a sudden she just marches right into the shop and

starts tossing pieces of wood around.”

“What for?”

71

Emil waved a hand. “That’s what I wanted to know. She said

she needed some wood to make a drying stand. Something like

that, anyway. So everybody gets up and helps her look. Finally she takes some stuff and sashays right back out. Then just when I got

everybody all settled again, she’s back. This time she grabs this

pretty piece I’d been saving for a box.”

“Did you say something?”

“I said, Hey, I want that. I’ll find you something else. And she

said, ‘It’s just a board. Don’t be such a
chisler
.’ She thought she was very clever, that Petra Lekstrom.”

Roelke rolled his eyes. He wasn’t big on puns.

“She took that board,” Emil said. “But that night, I told Oscar

what happened. He just settled down with some wood like most

every evening. He was still at it when I went to bed. In the morn-

ing, I see he’s carved a woman holding a paint brush. It looks half like Petra and half like a witch. I laughed when I saw it. Oscar says to me, ‘You tell Petra Lekstrom that rosemalers sniff turpentine.’”

“And … did you tell her that?”

“No,” Emil conceded, eyes twinkling. “But Oscar and me took

that carving to the rosemalers’ classroom real early, before anyone else was around, and put it up on a shelf. That Petra, she laughed when she took the wood. But we got the last laugh.” He held his

board toward Roelke. “You see this curved design in between these

two straight-edge borders? I’ll show you how to do that tomor-

row.”

The lacey design looked difficult. “Then I better get to bed,”

Roelke said. “Thank you, Emil. Good night.”

72

After washing the mug, Roelke headed up the steep stairs to the

guest room tucked beneath the eaves. His mind raced with

thoughts … of Petra Lekstrom, of his father.

Finally, after tossing and turning beneath the blankets for way

too long, he made a deliberate mental switch and thought of

Chloe instead. Usually thinking of Chloe—of the miracle of her

actually dating him—was enough. Tonight, it wasn’t. They weren’t

together and that was wrong, just plain wrong.

Roelke had no intention of pushing things with Chloe. He’d

wanted to date her for three months before she finally agreed to