The Runestone Incident (The Incident Series, #2) (6 page)

6

Saturday morning I got up with the realization that for Sabina’s sake I could not just sit back and wait for Quinn to lose interest in time travel and leave town. There
was
a simple way out of this, and that was to find proof in the present that the runestone was a fake. Because here was the thing: When Quinn called back on Monday, I wanted to be better armed. If the Vikings-in-Minnesota story was a myth, then there had to be proof of that in the present. And I wanted to be able to shove that proof under his nose.

And if the runestone was real…well, there should be proof of that, too.

I had two days to find it. Something that no one had managed to do in more than a hundred years.

I figured the best way to start would be by following one of one of time travel’s unwritten rules,
Do your library research first
. Wikipedia only got you so far.

After eating a quick breakfast and showering, I grabbed a light jacket and my shoulder bag and left the house, careful to close the front door quietly so as not to wake Abigail and Sabina. I decided to walk to campus—it was just a twenty-minute stroll to the Coffey Library, on the opposite side of the lake from my office. I hadn’t been to the library much since graduating with my business degree. And here I was about to ascend its steps for the second time in as many days.

It was a weekend, but like all student spaces on campus, the library hummed with activity, albeit of the quiet kind. Headphoned students sat holed up in corners, studying. The librarian at the front desk, Scott, greeted me cheerfully and asked if I needed any help. I shook my head and asked how the funding drive for the new library wing was progressing. The expansion, still in the planning stage, was meant to house our steadily increasing store of ancient texts, most of them painstakingly obtained on STEWie runs with the aid of handheld scanners and currently stuffed into the glass cabinet in the basement. The tug of war between the campus museum and the Coffey Library on the matter—the museum had the space, but the library offered hands-on accessibility to visitors—had been resolved by Chancellor Jane Evans, who made the simple suggestion that the manuscripts should be made available in both places. Scott explained that the fundraiser was progressing as they usually did—slowly—and pointed me to the library computers.

I ran into Dr. Payne by the computers. He nodded at me and asked what I was doing there, as if the library was reserved for academics only.

I explained.

“You’re wasting your time, Julia. I hope Dr. Holm hasn’t been encouraging this.” He chuckled mirthlessly. “Even
if
we went back in time to watch the farmer stumble upon the stone, what would it prove? That he probably planted it there himself.”

“I’m just killing a free Saturday morning,” I said mildly.

“You should have better things to do.”

That was probably true.

“Since I’m here already,” I said with a shrug, “I might as well grab a book or two on the subject. If you’ll excuse me—”

He went on as if I hadn’t said anything. “The runes on the stone are completely…ah, shall we say,
unexpected
. And the inscription is long, ridiculously so. The bottom line is that no artifacts or historical accounts lend credence to the story of medieval Norse reaching what is now the state of Minnesota.”

“Then my visit here will be short.”

“Feel free to consult me if you need an opinion on any of the materials. Some of the so-called authors on the runestone issue are hacks.” He swiped a hand over his comb-over and let out a sharp laugh, as though what he had said was hilarious. “Some? Most!”

With that, he turned on his heel and burrowed deeper into the library. I sat down at a computer terminal to do a quick search and soon was headed into the stacks armed with several call numbers.

The books concerning the runestone seemed to be spread evenly between two shelves, one devoted to general-interest
history
books, and one whose subject matter, according to the shelf label, was
Impostors, Forgeries & Fraud
. A cursory glance at the covers revealed a wide range of opinions. One called the stone “the most important artifact in US history,” while another dubbed it a “transparent hoax.” I picked up a couple of the most objective-seeming books from each shelf, carried them to a free table by the window, and settled in for a morning of reading. As everyone connected to the STEWie program knew very well, much of History was made up of threads set in motion by a single person, and Olof Ohman had been one such person, whether the stone was real or not.

There were only a few pictures of the major players because the stone had been found at the turn of the century. The first showed the young Ohman family not long after they had settled on the farm. After emigrating from Sweden, Olof had purchased a forty-acre parcel in 1890 for $300, later expanding his farm with additional parcels. The farm was described as being three miles to the northeast of Kensington’s rail station on the Soo Line, which was the Minneapolis, St. Paul & Sault Ste. Marie railway. Olof had a heavy beard, and all of the Ohmans were looking unsmilingly at the camera. Then there was a jump of a few decades to a photo that was eerily similar to the one of Quinn’s grandfather next to the stone. A middle-aged Olof Ohman was standing stiffly in a suit by the stone at some sort of ceremony, flanked by a pair of soldiers in full garb, his hand resting lightly on the stone as it stood up propped on wooden boxes. Again, he looked dead serious, as Magnus had in his photo, not at all like a man with a bent for practical jokes. There was one last photo, of Olof and Karin Ohman in their old age standing side by side on their land, a year before the good farmer would pass away, both white-haired, bespectacled, and seemingly shrunken by life. It was no wonder—they had raised nine children.

I came across a sworn affidavit that Olof had given to the county register or someone of similar official standing regarding his unusual find. It began with his swearing in and continued,

I am fifty-four years of age, and was born in Helsingeland, Sweden, from where I emigrated to America in the year 1881, and settled upon
my farm in Section Fourteen, Township of Solem, in 1891. In the
month of August, 1898, while accompanied by my son, Edward, I was engaged in grubbing upon a timbered elevation, surrounded by marshes…Upon moving an asp, measuring about 10 inches in diameter at its base, I discovered a flat stone inscribed with characters, to me unintelligible. The stone laid just beneath the surface…with one corner almost protruding. The two largest roots of the tree clasped the stone in such a manner that the stone must have been there at least as long as the tree…

I turned the page and found a letter written in the farmer’s own hand in his native Swedish, dated December 9, 1909. The four pages of tightly scribbled text included a small sketch, which showed the stone-harboring tree—the tree’s thick roots had grown horizontally over the width of the stone, making a right angle before continuing deeper into the ground.

Below the letter a translation had been supplied:

I saw that the stone was thin
, Olaf Ohman, who was fifty-five at the time, had written.
I simply put the grubbing hoe under it and turned the under side up…My boy Edward was about 10 years old. He was the first to see that there was something inscribed on the stone. The boys believed that they had found an Indian almanac…

I read some more and found out a few additional details, such as the name of the other son, Olof Jr., then age eleven. Magnus Olsen wasn’t mentioned anywhere in the book, but perhaps no one had remembered—or thought to mention—the presence of a neighborhood kid. There was a Sam Olson, a neighbor, but presumably there were quite a few families with the last name of Olsen or Olson on the plat maps and town records of the time. I wondered in passing how historians kept track of all the similar names. Magnus Olsen, Olof Ohman, Olof Jr. A lot of them seemed to begin with
O
.

The detail about the roots having a square kink to them, aside from seeming like a math joke, struck me as authentic. But perhaps that was the hallmark of the true hoaxer, and he had supplied the detail to hide his sleight of hand, like a magician would. I wondered how Olof’s wife, Karin, had felt about the runestone, but there were no quotes from her.

I pounced on the farmer’s words from the letter in Swedish:
The boys believed that they had found an Indian almanac. I myself also saw that there was something written. But to read it was a mystery to me.
How could someone born in Sweden, who had spent the first twe
nty-fi
ve years of his life there,
not
have recognized runic writing?

Unfortunately for my theory of the farmer’s guilt, he wasn’t the only one. After being dug up, the stone was moved to the local bank, where the public viewed it, with its strange symbols and ancient look. An enterprising townsperson, thinking the inscription was, of all things, Greek, sent a copy to a Minneapolis newspaper. The editors forwarded it to University of Minnesota, where the Greek scholars recognized that the text was, well, Greek to them and got it to the right place, a university expert in Scandinavian languages, who gave the stone a thumbs down. After hearing the news, Olof Ohman promptly stored the stone in his grain shed.

That was how things went before STEWie.

I leafed through a few more pages. A half-hearted effort had been made to excavate the spot and to look for the skeletons of the ten dead men, but neither they nor any additional artifacts had been found. Two witnesses, both acquaintances of the family, cancelled each other out, with one person swearing that he’d helped Olof carve the runes and the other that he had seen the stone unearthed with his own eyes. From that point onward, the opinions varied, with professional linguists and historians firmly on the
no
side and amateur enthusiasts and the occasional
geologist
leaning toward
yes
.

I didn’t like assuming anyone was a liar or that Dr. Payne was right, but the most likely scenario was that Olof Ohman had carved the stone in his barn soon after settling on his new farm, then buried it under the tree only to “discover” it several years later, giving the roots plenty of time to curl down over the runestone. It didn’t embroil the two Ohman sons or Magnus in the hoax…unless the boys had been in on the whole thing, eager to participate in the prank, a rare bit of fun in the hard-scrabble immigrant life.

I left the library thinking that the matter should have a simple answer. Either the stone was real, or it wasn’t. Though I highly doubted he had bothered to do much research, I was beginning to see why Quinn had thought a STEWie run might be just the thing.

7

The following morning, I awoke to the chirping of birds and the thought that I only had a day left. It was high time for me to see the runestone in person. Not on a STEWie run, but in the museum over in Alexandria.

The thing was, I wanted someone else’s opinion on whether the whole thing was a hoax…and who better than an expert in crime?

I called up Nate to see if he felt like taking a Sunday drive. It was only after I hung up the phone that I realized what I had done. One, he must have thought I had just invited him on an unofficial date. Two, had I? I could just as easily have called our retired chief of security, Dan Anderson, and asked him to come. Dan didn’t get out much these days and would have probably enjoyed the company. Three, this was hardly the time to be thinking about romance, with my almost-ex husband back in town with blackmail on his mind…so did that mean I should dress down in a ratty T-shirt and sweatpants to prevent any misunderstandings about the nature of my invitation? Or four, did it mean I should dress up, because that would make Nate less suspicious that something else was going on?

I rather thought Nate wouldn’t notice either way and decided to stay with my jeans and button-down shirt.

He showed up an hour later in slacks and a windbreaker, his hair wet and freshly combed. Wanda burst out of the Jeep and ran inside to greet Celer, who submitted to the other dog’s sniffing without bothering to get up. Nate suggested we take his Jeep and not my aged Honda, and we left, leaving Abigail and Sabina to decide whether they wanted to take the dogs on a walk to the nearby apple orchard or drive them. It was certainly a nice day for it—the apple-picking season was in full swing, and Friday’s humid rain had been replaced by sunshine and a crispness in the air that hinted that winter was not far off. I promised the girls that we’d try making an apple pie in the afternoon.

Nate drove the half hour to Alexandria on Highway 94 through gently hilly farmland while I looked out the window, watching the scattered farmhouses with their red barns and dome-topped corn silos, the pointy Lutheran church spires peeking above treetops, and the small lakes surrounded by tall grasses, wondering what the area had been like when Olof Ohman had arrived from Scandinavia in search of a better life. Here and there cows and buffalo grazed placidly, not bothering to look up at the highway traffic zipping by. Fields laden with yellow corn rippled gently in the wind. The billboards disfiguring the scenery on both sides of the highway would not have been there in Olof Ohman’s time, of course, nor would the road itself, for that matter. A wagon and horses would have been used for transport. And in the fourteenth century, the date given on the runestone, travelers would have relied on the waterways.

The runestone matter had grown more urgent. Quinn hadn’t been bluffing about having evidence. Abigail had noticed that a photo was missing from Sabina’s room. It was one we had taken of the girl sweeping the street in front of her father’s shop on the morning of our last day there. Celer was also in it, lounging in a shaft of summer sunshine. As I had pointed out to Abigail, we had no way of explaining their presence in a photo of a bustling Pompeian street, complete with a single-domed, pre-eruption Vesuvius in the background.

“Sure there is. Creative editing,” Abigail had suggested.
“Photoshop.”

“Yes, but I doubt that the fake background we’ve given her as an Italian immigrant would stand up to more than a casual inquiry if Quinn posts the photo online. Not to mention that Sabina doesn’t speak Italian like we claimed but a very early
version
of it.” I added with perhaps more optimism than the situation warranted, “I’m hoping that Quinn will return the photo with the signed divorce papers.”

“I wouldn’t hold my breath,” Abigail had said.

She and I had agreed that it was best not to say anything to Sabina, not until it was absolutely necessary. Luckily she hadn’t noticed the missing photo yet.

As for Nate—I knew that if I told him what was going on, he’d turn the car around to find Quinn and arrest him for blackmail and theft, letting the chips fall as they may. Instead, I went with a half-truth. I wasn’t proud of it, but I had to put Sabina’s welfare first. All I wanted was for this to go away quietly.

So when Nate asked me why I was interested in the
runestone
,
I told him I was just brushing up on local history, in case any related STEWie requests popped up. If he assumed that it was just a pretext for spending the day with him, well, so be it.

Nate nodded at my answer and, speeding up to pass a U-Haul truck, asked, “What
are
runes, anyway? Foreign languages are not exactly my strong point.”

He had mentioned that before. As a child of grandparents who had come from four different backgrounds, he’d had plenty of opportunity to pick up languages other than English, but apparently none of them had stuck.

I had garnered a bit of information from reading the books on the runestone. “It’s the early alphabet of the Germanic languages—what Old English was first written down in. The
Scandinavian version is the
futhark
, named for the first six
letters
,
F, U, TH, A, R, and K. Runes were developed for writing
on wood, so they have few curves. They look a little like stick
figures
,” I said, thinking of the poster Dr. Holm had shown me in the Coffey Library. I rattled off a few more facts and added, “By the way, thanks for coming out with me.”

“Happy to do it. So is this thing real, this stone?”

“That’s what I need your opinion on.”

“I’m not a historian.”

“I’ve already got an opinion from a historian. Dr. Payne—his specialty is American history—said that the stone is a hoax, and a poorly executed one at that. Dr. Holm, whose specialty is runic linguistics, sounds like she thinks there might be something to it and would be happy to tackle the problem with a STEWie run or two, if only she could secure a green light from Dr. Payne and funding. I’m guessing you’ve come across hoaxers before?” I asked before remembering what had made him leave the BWCAW. A photographer he had been smitten with had been
setting
wildfires
throughout the Boundary Waters wilderness. Why she had done it never became clear, but before Nate and everyone else had caught on, one of the fires got out of hand, killing a park ranger. The pyromaniac was now in prison. Wanda had been her dog. But I wasn’t sure that counted as a hoax exactly.

Apparently neither did he, because all he said was, “Only of the identity theft kind. It doesn’t apply in this case.”

“Yeah, I don’t think the runestone was carved for financial gain. The good farmer got all of ten dollars for his find from the Minnesota Historical Society after the stone changed hands.” As an aside, I added, “If it had been me, I think I would have charged people who wanted to see where the stone was dug up. Nothing wrong with making a bit of extra spending money.”

“It makes him seem like an honest man, this farmer of yours.”

“I guess.”

Nate had once told me that in his experience most crimes came down to one of five motives: greed, desire, fear, jealousy, or desperation. We discussed them each in turn and ruled out fear and desperation as motives for Olof Ohman, and also, per our discussion, greed. That left the Scandinavian immigrant community’s jealousy of the Italian immigrant community over the whole Columbus issue…or, a shade more nobly, Olof’s desire to see his Viking ancestors get their dues.

Nate gave a small shrug. “If it was a hoax, then your
farmer—”

“Olof Ohman.”

“—Olof Ohman may have done it just to get his name into newspapers. Generally speaking, to run a successful scam—
whatever
the motive, money or fame—you have to give people what they want, something big for their eyes to feast on. Like a
letter
saying
you’ve won a million dollars and they’d be happy to send you the money after you pay the small transfer fee of $250. If you
were already enthusiastic about the idea of Vikings in Minnesota—
and I’m not talking about the football team—then I suppose farmer Olof Ohman’s ‘find’ would have been just the thing.”

“Yes, that makes sense. The runestone would be the missing link between the Vikings of old and the Scandinavian-Americans who live in the Kensington area. It’s what people want.”

He brought up another possibility as he slowed down to turn onto the exit for Alexandria. “Could it have been a joke that got out of hand?”

“You mean Olof Ohman might have made it up because he wanted something to do during the long Minnesota winters? Could be. It’s just that he looks dead serious in all of his photos. But then they all did.”

“It can’t have been an easy life, not for an immigrant farmer trying to eke out a living. Then again, I would think his family and neighbors would have noticed if he had lugged a stone into his barn and started spending a lot of time in there.”

“Why would they?” I said a bit more snappily than I intended.

He glanced over at me. “I just meant that it was a tight-knit community. Nowadays people spend years living across the street from someone without ever meeting them. It wasn’t like that back then.”

He was right, of course. Even the neighbor I knew best, Martha, probably wouldn’t have noticed if I’d taken to carving stones in the privacy of my garage. But that was how it went today—we didn’t rely on our neighbors for help with daily problems or even a cup of something hot in the evening. Our
support
networks were geographically broader—my parents lived in Florida, my cousins were in Austin, and my best friend from
college
had moved to Seattle.

Nate slowed down to a stop at a red light. “Hey, how come you haven’t seen this stone before? Didn’t you grow up in this area?”

“I was sick the day of the school trip. My parents wrote about this kind of stuff, but they never thought to take me along. They ran the local newspaper—not the campus one, the Thornberg one—back in the days when everyone read it and you could make a decent living selling ad space.” Quinn had always meant to take me to see his grandfather’s stone, but we had never gotten around to it. And by the end of our relationship, I was tired of hearing about it.

Since Nate had asked me a personal question, I decided it would only be fair play if I asked one in return. “What about you, how did you end up with such a motley collection of grandparents?”

He flashed a grin at me. “You mean, one-fourth Dakota, one-fourth Scottish, one-fourth Sri Lankan, and one-fourth Quebecois? Simple. My grandmother Mary met my grandfather Duncan at a picnic—that’s the Dakota and Scottish connection. Two months later they married and in due course had seven children, one of them being my father, Nate Senior. On the other side, my grandmother Renée met my grandfather Nimal at school, thereby cementing the Quebecois and Sri Lankan side of the family. They had one child, a daughter named Gigi. Gigi and Nate Senior met in college, and I’m the result.”

“That’s quite a family story. Mine’s pretty simple.”

“Everyone is of Norwegian ancestry?”

“Pretty much. Lots of blue eyes and blonde hair in the family, except for me. I’m the black sheep—or rather, the brown one,” I added, giving myself a mental kick for comparing my hair and eye color to a sheep’s.

“And Quinn?” he said as the light changed and he sped up.

“What about him?” I asked.

“Every other person in Thornberg seems to be from Scandinavia. Is his family from Norway as well?”

“Oh, that. No, they’re Danish. They never quite warmed up to me, since I was from a Norwegian family and all.”

“People are funny sometimes, aren’t they?”

“I’d say as a rule they are, yes.”

“Julia?”

“Yes?”

His attention was focused on the road. “I seem to remember promising to make shrimp curry for you again one of these days.”

The first time the shrimp curry had come up had been at a garum shop, as we waited for Professor Mooney to swap some goods with Sabina’s father for a tunic for Nate and a dress for me. The shrimp curry, which Nate had made at a celebratory picnic after we got home, had indeed been delicious, as promised.

“So how about next Friday, at my place?” he went on.

Maybe I should have worn a ratty T-shirt after all. I wasn’t sure I was ready for this, for dinner with Nate. After all, dinners led to other things. I rolled down the window a bit. The inside of the car suddenly seemed too hot.

“Julia?”

“Friday night it is,” I said. I hoped the whole thing with Quinn would be over by then. I wanted him to stay firmly in my past. And once he was gone for good, maybe things with Nate would be clearer. It was quite possible that I was reading too much into it anyway, and he was just being polite. Perhaps all of Helen’s goading had gone to my brain.