The Heirloom Murders (9 page)

“Oh,” Chloe said softly. Markus shot her a quizzical glance, and she waved a hand to say,
No, nothing.
But it wasn’t nothing. For just a moment she’d felt a flush of the old affection, the old admiration for Markus’s energy, the old comfort of a shared passion for living history. For just a moment she had forgotten all the ugliness.

Which was unsettling. “I’ll wait outside,” she announced. She turned her back on the men, left the barn, and walked across the farmyard.

The interpreters had locked the sauna when they left for the day, but Chloe had a key and she let herself inside. It was her favorite building on the site, and she sank onto one of the benches in front of the fire pit. The building smelled of smoke because the interpreters sometimes built a fire, heating rocks before splashing them with cold water to demonstrate the old Finnish ritual of steam baths. Chloe closed her eyes.

Most of the historic buildings on the site gave her jumbled impressions, the mix of emotional residue that built up in layers over time. Not this one. She could sense the Finnish women who had once found respite in this tiny room; could feel their calm, their sense of safe respite, the strength they called
sisu
, emanating from the fibers of wood and stone.

Perhaps ten minutes later she heard tires crunch on gravel outside, the slam of a car door, then tentative footsteps in the entryway. Dellyn poked her head around the inner door. “Hey,” she said, her eyebrows arching toward the headscarf that covered her hair. She wore her usual on-site garb: long black skirt, faded blouse, dirty apron. “Um … why are you sitting in the sauna?”

“It’s peaceful in here,” Chloe said. “The Finnish women came in here together, you know? And not just to bathe. They even came in here to give birth. I can picture this building as it was for them, clean and safe and warm.” She shrugged, a little embarrassed. “Sitting in here helps me calm down.”

Dellyn sank down on the bench beside her. “Do you need to calm down?”

Chloe reminded herself that Dellyn’s problems were much bigger than her own. “Mostly I’m here because a guy from Ballenberg is talking to Larry in the barn.”

Dellyn circled one hand in a
Keep
going
gesture. “And …”

“He’s an old, um, acquaintance.”

“It’s your ex, isn’t it! The guy you lived with in Switzerland.”

Chloe sighed. She’d never mentioned her personal past to Dellyn, but the historic sites’ community was like any other. “Yeah.”

“Are you OK?”

“I have no idea.”

“Sorry.”

“Thanks. But how are you? How did things go with Simon?”

“Oh … all right, I suppose. Bonnie’s letter shook him.”

Chloe leaned back against the next higher bench. “Bonnie didn’t send him one?”

“Nope. I think that really hurt him. We sat and talked for a while. It was the nicest he’s been to me in a long time.”

Chloe tried to weigh that statement against the brooding questions in Roelke’s eyes whenever Simon Sabatola’s name was spoken. Should she try to warn Dellyn against him? But on what grounds? For now at least, she told herself, keep your mouth shut.

Dellyn picked up the dipper used to sprinkle cold water on the stones, and smacked the ladle against one palm. “Simon’s going to take me out to dinner. He said we’d both do well with a change of scene for an hour or so.” She sighed. “I think he would have made a good brother-in-law, if I’d just let him.”

“I wish you weren’t so hard on yourself.”

“Let’s talk about you for a while. So, who’s this Swiss guy?”

Chloe was spared further discussion of her tumultuous love life as the sound of male voices drifted through the open door. She scrambled to her feet. She’d let Markus invade her site. No way was she letting him inside her sauna. She grabbed Dellyn’s wrist and towed her outside. Chloe didn’t make the introductions until the door was safely locked behind them.

“I’m glad to meet you,” Markus told Dellyn. “The gardens are fantastic! May I come back and talk with you about your heirloom varieties?”

“Um … OK,” Dellyn said.

Chloe let them make arrangements to meet. “I have to be in Madison that day,” she lied blithely, when Markus tried to include her.

Dellyn shrugged. “No problem. Listen, I’ve got chores to finish. Chloe, I’ll see you later.”

“Yeah,” Chloe said, hoping that wasn’t code for “Chloe, I’ll
want all the details later.” She touched her friend’s arm, “Oh—
Dellyn? What did you think of that file I left on your kitchen table on Saturday?”

Dellyn looked blank. “What file?”

“The one marked ‘G. F. Kunz.’ Kunz was referenced in that article about the Eagle Diamond you gave me. He was an appraiser from New York, and in 1883 he wrote a letter to some jeweler, saying the diamond was worth about seven hundred dollars. I found the file in your parents’ study, and left it out on the kitchen table for you.”

Dellyn pinched her lips into a tight line for a moment. “If you left it out, I must have seen it, but …” She thumped the hoe she was holding against the ground several times. “I don’t even remember. I swear, Chloe, sometimes I think I’m truly losing my mind.”

“You’re on overload, that’s all.” Chloe wished that she’d never mentioned the stupid file. “Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m sorry,” Dellyn said to Markus. “It was nice to meet you, but I’ve got to spread ashes on the cabbage plants before the moths eat them.” Blinking fiercely, she strode toward the garden.

Markus shoved his hands in his pockets, watching her go. “Is she all right?”

“Her sister just died,” Chloe reminded him. Something she couldn’t quite put her finger on was making her uneasy. “But I’m starting to wonder if something else is going on, too.”

“Pardon me,” Roelke said
politely, as two young women wearing long dresses pushed through the tavern door.

“No problem!” one of them said, with a big smile. Her green-and-white striped dress was fancy, with what must have been a pillow somehow stuck on her butt to hold out a froth of ruffles. Her companion was dressed as if she was one step away from the poorhouse: a patched skirt, a faded blouse, an equally sun-bleached headscarf tied over her hair. That one fished car keys from the cloth-covered basket over her arm, and the two made their way to the parking lot.

Roelke watched them go. Since coming to Eagle the previous year, he’d gotten to know the local bar scene. He knew which tavern attracted a low-key family crowd; which bar was most likely to attract trouble. Same as on his Milwaukee beat. But he’d never experienced a place like Sasso’s. Often half of the patrons wore some kind of historic costume. “Period clothing,” Chloe had once corrected him. “Costume implies something superficial.”

Whatever that meant.

Roelke stepped inside. The taproom was crowded with Eagle residents and Old World interpreters, all relaxing at the end of the day with a cold one and, perhaps, a basket of fish and fries or a burger. Roelke caught the owner’s eye and nodded—the man had a good relationship with the local cops. He ran a clean place.

Tonight looked much like any other evening. Roelke was pulling a double shift, so he’d be just as happy if things stayed quiet. He strolled through the crowd, Seeing and Being Seen. He asked for one kid’s ID, and the young man triumphantly proved that he was, indeed, legal. Barely, but that still counted.

“Happy birthday,” Roelke said. “You’re not going to ruin your night by driving home, are you?”

“Nope,” the kid said. “I’m drinking. He—” he pointed to his friend, who was nursing a fizzing soda—“is driving.”

Roelke grinned. “Have a good evening, then.”

He made a looping saunter through the crowd. No sign of anyone drinking to excess. No sign of anything problematic at all.

Then, just as he was turning to wind his way back to the door, he caught a glimpse of someone pressed against the wall. Something in Roelke’s chest hitched, like a knot being tightened. Chloe’s back was to him, but Roelke recognized that waterfall of blonde hair, the slope of her shoulders, the thin fingers wrapped around the stem of a wine glass. He changed course.

Chloe’s companion was a stranger, a wiry man with light brown hair, a narrow nose, and a focused gaze that didn’t leave Chloe’s face even when he drank from a stein of dark beer. As Roelke approached the man said something inaudible. Chloe laughed, a rippling peal that seemed to come from some deep, joyful place inside.

Damn
it. Roelke stopped behind Chloe. If he wasn’t on duty he might have put a hand on her shoulder. But he was, so he didn’t.

The stranger saw him first. A look of surprise chased the good humor from his face. “Yes, officer?” he asked politely. He had a slight German accent. “
Suisse-Deutsch
,” Chloe had once corrected him.

Whatever the hell that meant. Roelke spoke with equal politeness. “Good evening.”

Chloe whirled. “Roelke! I—um—are you on duty?”

“I’m not in the habit of socializing in uniform.”

Her cheeks flushed. “Um … Roelke, this is Markus Meili. Markus, this is my friend Roelke McKenna. He works for the Eagle Police Department.”

Meili offered his hand. “Pleased to meet you.” His tone was still cordial, but his eyes narrowed, clearly assessing.

“Likewise,” Roelke lied, doing some hard assessing of his own. So. This was the Swiss ex. Chloe had gone from ‘I don’t know if I’m even going to see him’ to ‘Oh, Alpine Boy, that’s so funny’ at lightning speed.

“We were just … that is, Markus wanted to see Old World,” Chloe said. “I introduced him to the historic farmer and then we, um … we decided to—you know. Stop for a bite.”

Roelke waited a beat, letting the silence become uncomfortable. Then he said, “Have a pleasant evening,” in his best cop voice, the one he pulled from his back pocket when people were acting like assholes, and walked away.

_____

“Is that the guy?” Markus asked.

Chloe commanded her fingers to loosen their death grip on the wine glass. “What guy?”

“The ‘maybe’ guy.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because I
know
you, Chloe.” Markus sighed. “Look, we should at least be honest with each other.”

Damn the man, Chloe thought. She considered demurring again—what Roelke McKenna did or did not mean to her was none of her ex’s business—but decided that she’d only sound petulant. “Yeah,” she said finally. “That’s the guy.”

“A policeman?” Markus asked, almost to himself. He looked utterly perplexed.

Chloe drained her wine, leaned over, and deposited the glass on the bar. “I gotta go.”

They said good-bye in the parking lot. “This was nice,” Markus said. “And we have a return trip to the Frietags to look forward to.”

Chloe shrugged. “Well … I don’t know. Dellyn should be the one to go with you.”

“Maybe,” he said softly. “But I’d rather take you.”

Chloe took a small step backward. Sasso’s parking lot, with its steady stream of Old World staff, was the last place she wanted Markus to make a move. “I
said
, I don’t know. Give me some space, will you? I’ll think about it.”

Moments later Chloe watched his rental car crawl from Sasso’s
parking lot. Well, shit. Her last words to Markus Meili had sounded
petulant and shrewish.

So what? she asked herself. She didn’t know if she wanted to go on another excursion with him. And yet … part of her
did
want to go back to the farm with him. Part of her
did
want to try to recreate their past, the shared camaraderie—the easiness that had briefly taken over this evening.

And that part scared her witless.

She slid into her Pinto and slammed the door with unnecessary force. Then she rested her elbows on the steering wheel, and her face in her hands. Taking Markus to Sasso’s had been royally stupid.

She hadn’t planned to take Markus to Old World, and she had. And then when he suggested dinner … well, it seemed rude to refuse. The site tour had given them something to talk about over their meal. And when they’d relinquished their table to waiting diners, and Markus had suggested a nightcap, something made her agree.

A sharp rap on the car window jerked Chloe back to the moment. A young man wearing a straw hat, linen shirt, and wool trousers held up with suspenders stood by the car. She rolled the window down.

“You OK?” he asked.

One of the interpreters. From the German area, wasn’t it? “Yeah,” Chloe said. “Just a headache. But I’m fine.”

“OK, then,” he said, and sauntered on to his own junker. People didn’t go into historic sites work for the money. But they are kind, Chloe thought. They take care of their own.

And that made her think about Dellyn. Her friend Dellyn, who was struggling with far worse problems than
she
was.

Chloe stared blindly out the windshield, letting something that had been nagging at her subconscious wiggle to the foreground. As it did, she felt another flicker of unease. It seemed odd that Dellyn didn’t even
remember
seeing the file Chloe had left out on her kitchen table. Misplacing it, as she had done the original article about the Eagle Diamond—maybe. But to not even remember seeing it …

Chloe fished her key from her pocket, and turned it in the ignition. If she took the more easterly route home, she’d drive right by Dellyn’s place.

Five minutes later she parked on the street in front of the Burke house. Twilight had muted the evening, but a lamp burned in the front window. Chloe marched up to the porch and rang the bell.

The chime was met with only silence. She rang again, waited. Nothing. Well, Dellyn had said Simon was taking her to dinner. Maybe she was still out. The free-standing garage was windowless, so she had no way of checking for Dellyn’s car.

Or … maybe Dellyn
was
home, and finding solace in her mother’s garden. Chloe hurried around the house. The garden was empty, but a light glowed from the old barn beyond it. Maybe Dellyn had decided to poke through whatever had been stashed there. She was probably looking for artifacts to display in the Garden Fair.

Chloe skirted the garden. The barn door was ajar, and she slid inside. The building still smelled faintly of musty hay and manure. Several bare bulbs cast a yellow glow on stalls now filled mostly with furniture—a chest of drawers, a huge china cabinet. A long wooden counter, perhaps saved from an old store, had been shoved against the closest wall. An anvil, and a variety of blacksmithing tools, stood in front of it.

Geez Louise. It would take some digging to excavate the agricultural tools Dellyn hoped to find.

There was no sign of Dellyn. One of the far corners had been walled off—perhaps an office or workroom of sorts?—and Chloe headed in that direction. “Hello?” she called.

The lights went off.

Chloe froze mid-sentence, mid-stride. OK, she told herself. No need to panic. Maybe some faulty old circuit had shorted out. She instinctively summoned Grandma Ellefson from memory’s murky depths.
There’s nothing here that wasn’t here in the light,
she used to say, when Chloe or her sister got spooked of the dark.

Then Chloe heard a faint scrabble of sound, off to her left, near the back wall. The fine hairs on the back of her neck quivered to attention.

Get a grip, Chloe ordered herself. Maybe Dellyn had made the noise, and was standing in frozen stillness too, equally spooked.

“Hello?” Chloe called again. At least she’d intended to call. The word came out as more of a quivering croak.

No answer. Chloe chewed her lower lip. OK,
still
no reason to panic. She’d probably heard a critter. Raccoon, porcupine, or even an owl.

But there was no reason to speculate. Her eyes were adjusting to the gloom. All she wanted to do was get out of the barn. Preferably without tripping over some artifact and impaling herself on a sickle.

She’d taken several steps when she heard a wooden creak. Close. Behind her. As she whirled something hard skimmed the side of her head and slammed into her left shoulder. Her knees buckled. The floorboards smacked her, hard. Chloe landed on hands and knees. Force kept her going, onto one shoulder and hip. “Ow!” she yipped. Something ripped into her arm.

Footsteps retreated toward the door.

Tears scalded Chloe’s eyes as she struggled with pain, and with shock … and finally, with the understanding that someone had actually attacked her.

_____

After leaving Sasso’s, Roelke stopped at the station to use the can, have a soda, and work on his daily report. He kept good notes, but it was hard to be neat when scrawling on a clipboard in the car. Thorough reports might make the difference to the Police Committee. Besides, he liked things tidy.

He recorded the swings through the village park and schoolyard—no sign of trouble—and the speeder he’d pulled over. He made a terse entry about the bar checks, ending at Sasso’s.

Where Chloe had been laughing it up with her ex. He left that part out, but was glaring at the report when someone banged on the door.

Roelke frowned. Once regular office hours passed, people usually called if they needed help. He set the clipboard aside, hurried to the door, and jerked it open.

Jesus
. Chloe stood there, her blouse torn, eyes brimming with tears.

Something inside of Roelke went very still, and hot, and hard. That
bastard
.

“Um, Roelke?” Chloe quavered. “Someone hit me.”

“Come inside.” He put a hand on her shoulder, guiding her as gently as he could while filled with fury. He looked beyond her—her car, no one else in sight—before closing the door. “What did he do?”

Chloe dropped into the chair he indicated. “He hit my shoulder. But I was turning around. I think he was aiming for my head. If I hadn’t been turning, he would have hit me on the head.”

“Were you still at Sasso’s?” Roelke asked. He wanted witnesses.

“What? No!” Chloe blinked, and sniffed. “I was in Dellyn’s barn.”

“What were you two doing in Dellyn’s barn?”

Chloe wrinkled her forehead at him. Then something dawned in her eyes. “It wasn’t
Markus
, you idiot! I don’t know who it was.” She told him what had happened.

With a stab of regret, Roelke let go of the mental movie that starred him, cop extraordinaire, arresting Markus Meili for assault. “How badly are you hurt?”

“Not badly.” Chloe moved her left shoulder gingerly, then examined her scraped palms. “I was scared more than anything else.” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “Now I’m mostly pissed.”

“Come with me.” Roelke towed her into the bathroom, where he carefully washed her hands and coated the abrasions with antiseptic. Next he bandaged a bad cut on her right arm, holding his breath, fingers tingling as he reached through her torn shirt. “What did this? Did you fall against something metallic?”