Bonereapers

by Jeanne Matthews

  “Er-i-ka!”

  Dinah tensed. Sheridan reminded her of Stanley Kowalski bellowing for his Stella.

  A riot of angry shouts went up outside her door. “I don’t know, Senator. She was here a minute ago.”

  “Don’t give me that. Where the hell is she now? Er-i-ka!”

  Dinah sighed and closed her book. Shrieking and Raging hovered over the battlefield of the Sheridans’ marriage, seemingly without letup.

  “Weren’t you watching?”

  “…to the toilet and…”

  “The hell with you. Er-i-ka!”

  If Sheridan’s frantic tone was any indication, Wrecker of Plans had entered the fray.

  Someone hammered on Dinah’s door.

  “Are you in there, Erika? Open up.”

  Dinah threw on her Radisson-issue robe and cracked the door to the length of the chain. “Is she in there?” Sheridan was yelling.

  Lee, Erika’s guard, stood behind him. He looked flummoxed, nothing like the tough guy who’d guarded Erika’s door. Whitney Keyes, Tipton, and Valerie had gathered behind Lee.

  “I’m alone,” said Dinah. “I haven’t seen Erika since yesterday morning.”

  “We’ll see about that. Let me in.” Sheridan jerked the chain, but it held.

  Valerie detached from her huddle with Keyes and Tipton and stepped in front of him. She was dressed in her robe, but her make-up was flawless. “Is she in there, Dinah? Are you hiding her?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t believe you,” said Sheridan. “Let us in.”

  “She’s not here, Senator.”

  “If you don’t open this door, I’ll break it down,” said Sheridan.

  “Colt, please.” Valerie put a hand on his sleeve, but he threw it off. She said, “Dinah, if you will let him satisfy himself that she’s not there, we will leave you in peace.”

  Dinah took off the chain and opened the door. Sheridan and Lee charged inside. The senator looked inside the bathroom. Lee searched the closet.

  Sheridan raked his fingers through his hair. “Christ. Now what?”

  Without coming inside, Keyes began to issue orders. “Lee, you go ask the people at the front desk if anyone saw her leave and notify Rod that we’ll need his help. Tip, you’d better let Jake know there’s a problem. Colt, you’ve seen she’s not here. Let’s take the problem elsewhere.”

  Lee hurried out of the room. Tip beetled off toward the elevator. Sheridan stood frozen.

  “Come on, Colt,” said Valerie. “Let’s have some coffee and talk. She can’t have gone far.”

  Keyes moved Valerie politely aside. “Valerie, if you would check the women’s room off the lobby and the ladies dressing room in the fitness center, that would be helpful. And see what we can find out from the night staff.”

  She was obviously reluctant, but yielded to necessity. “Try to keep calm, Colt. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  Keyes walked into the room. “We, all of us, owe you an apology, Dinah. You’ve been through an ordeal of your own today. Thinking that his wife may have been the target of that bullet has knocked Colt off his hinges.”

  Sheridan unfroze and spoke up in a controlled voice. “If you’ll excuse us, Whitney, I’d like to speak to Dinah privately.”

  “Come to my room when you’re through,” said Keyes.

  Sheridan closed the door behind him and turned back to Dinah. “Did Erika say anything, anything at all about where she was going?”

  “No.”

  “This isn’t a game, Dinah. If you know where she is or who she’s with…please, I’m begging you. Tell me now.”

  “Don’t talk to me about games, senator. A man was murdered and, in case Inspector Ramberg’s words didn’t sink in, somebody tried to murder me.” She held out her bandaged arm, which had begun to throb.

  “It could have been Erika.” When he spoke her name, his voice went husky.

  Dinah was unmoved. “I don’t know where Erika has gone or what she’s thinking, but if she’s playing hide-and-seek, maybe it’s because you’ve had her penned up like a prisoner.”

  “You don’t understand. Erika is a recovering alcoholic. She has delusions.”

  “Valerie gave me the party line. Alcohol, hallucinations. But I have to wonder if keeping Erika locked up has more to do with your concern that she’ll spill the beans about some hanky-panky of your own. Maybe something that would lose you the election.”

  “Erika has no interest in politics. She wouldn’t say or do anything to embarrass me publicly.”

  Inge’s note contradicted that rosy view. “You accused Erika of tipping off Eftevang that Jake Mahler was on your plane.”

  “She had no idea who Eftevang was until after his death.”

  “You accused her of tipping off somebody. Was it Aagaard?”

  “No.” He plopped into the chair beside the window and rubbed his eyes. “I thought she’d communicated with Maks Jorgen. Years ago they were lovers.”

  “And you think he sicced the press on you? Why? Is he an activist of some kind?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know who she talks to or what she’s thinking anymore.” He put his head in his hands. “I just don’t know.”

  “Maybe she’s run away with Maks to get back at you for being unfaithful to her.”

  “In twenty-seven years of marriage, I’ve never once been unfaithful to Erika.”

  “She seems to think you have.”

  “What do you mean? With whom? Did she tell you I was unfaithful? Did she say that?”

  The fact that the candidate would broach the subject of his wife’s former lover or ask such a personal question told Dinah that his veneer was cracking. She said, “I heard you arguing about someone named Hannalore. Who is she?”

  He rubbed his forehead and pressed his thumbs against his eyelids. “There is no Hannalore.”

  “She’s one of Erika’s delusions?”

  “Yes.” He teared up.

  Jerusalem. Was this guy for real? She kicked herself for being a smart ass in the midst of what was apparently a real crisis. The thing she didn’t know was whether those tears were for Erika or for the complications Erika added to his campaign. Either way, she diagnosed the need for a bracer. She went to the mini-bar, took out a bottle of vodka and a can of tomato juice, and mixed him a drink.

  His cell phone rang. He dived into his breast pocket and put the phone to his ear. “Nothing? And her boots are still there? Then she has to be in the hotel somewhere. Yes. Yes, I will.” He put the phone back in his pocket and stared out the window, perhaps thinking what to say to Erika or do with her once they had her corralled.

  Dinah pushed a strong Bloody Mary into his hand. “Drink this. It’ll steady your nerves.”

  “Thanks.” He put away half of it in a single gulp.

  “Valerie seems very fond of you. Maybe Erika misunderstands your relationship with her.”

  “That’s absurd.”

  “Your close working relationship with someone as attractive as Valerie would make a wife wonder.”

  “Val’s a political advisor. That’s all. She was Whitney’s go-to person for years until she moved on to Tillcorp. Ever since Jake decided to underwrite my campaign, she’s been my right-hand man and a trusted confidante. She likes Erika and Erika likes her.” He stopped, seemingly aghast. “Erika can’t think that Valerie and I…?”

  His look of sheer, gobsmacked innocence confounded Dinah. Was it possible he didn’t see that Valerie was in love with him? That they weren’t having an affair? She scrolled through the long list of politicians who lied their heads off about their extramarital frolics even when they were caught on Twitpic with their pants down. And yet it appeared that Colt Sheridan was telling the truth. “If it’s not anothe
r woman, what it is that has Erika so wrought up, senator.”

  “She’s probably told you already.”

  “Most of it.” Why keep on denying it if no one believed her? “But I’d like to hear your version.”

  “We’d been married for a few years when Erica found out…we found out that we couldn’t have children. We talked about adopting, but we were back and forth on the idea and it never happened. We went on. Everything was normal. Then a year ago, Erika began to exhibit signs of depression. She began to drink, more and more heavily as time passed. She…she dreamed up a child we didn’t have. A daughter. She calls her Hannalore.”

  Dinah hadn’t expected that, but Erika’s remark that what she wanted didn’t matter to Colt now made sense. And if she was running around telling everyone there was a little Sheridan out there somewhere and her husband didn’t care enough to help find her, the tabloids would have a field day. “Does Erika see this imaginary daughter? Talk to her?”

  “No. I don’t think so. But she’s got it in her head that she actually gave birth and the infant was kidnapped from the hospital. She’s obsessed with finding this phantom.”

  “Here in Norway?”

  “A figment isn’t confined to a single country.”

  “So your solution is to confine Erika?”

  He looked up, eyes glazed. He will never be president, thought Dinah. His skin’s too thin and his wife wielded not just the power to cripple his candidacy. She wielded the power to cut him to the quick. “Do you think she’s gone to find this make-believe daughter now?”

  “Not without her coat or her boots.” He passed a hand across his eyes and lumbered to his feet. “I know Val’s asked you not to speak about this. I’m the one who should be asking. Plenty of people, people in both parties, would love nothing better than to use this to ruin me.”

  “I’m not one of them.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Who is Inge?”

  He couldn’t have looked more stunned if she’d slapped him.

  “Is Inge a man or a woman?”

  “Erika’s sister is named Inge. Did she tell you she was going to find Inge?”

  Jake Mahler burst in the door without knocking, followed by Whitney Keyes and Tipton.

  “We beg your pardon,” said Keyes. “Sorry to intrude, but…”

  Mahler talked over him. “I’ve called Dybdahl. He says we’ve got to find her tonight or report the situation to Ramberg. I say call him tonight. He has the authority to search all the rooms. If she’s holed up here in the hotel, it would save us time and effort.”

  “Dybdahl doesn’t like him,” said Keyes, “but the policeman has no incentive to cause us any trouble.”

  Mahler sneered. “He’s got no incentive not to, but your wife has given us no choice but to bring him in.”

  Keyes addressed himself only to Sheridan. “I’ve been on the phone to D.C. and given your campaign chairman a script. Delayed due to high level talks on modifications to the Svalbard Treaty and increased U.S. naval activity in Norwegian waters. That should hold off the media for one or two cycles.”

  Sheridan turned to Dinah. “If she calls you, tell her I’ll do whatever she wants if she’ll just come back.”

  “Depends what she wants,” said Mahler. “Or so I’d guess.”

  Sheridan belted the rest of his drink and set the glass down on the window sill. His eyes hardened and the veneer of presidential decisiveness returned. “While you’re thinking about incentives, Jake, have you questioned your man, Lee? She couldn’t have gotten past him unless he let her.” He shoved past Mahler and Keyes, pushed Tipton out of his way, and walked out.

  Mahler scratched his face and tugged at his chin. “Just two things could derail Colt Sheridan.”

  “What are they?” asked Dinah.

  “Both of them are women.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  There was nothing to be done but wait. Dinah tried to relieve the tension by reading a myth. She opened her book to the story of Idun, the Norse goddess of youth and rebirth. Idun had an orchard in Asgard, the home of the gods, where she grew the apples of immortality. An apple a day kept the gods young and full of vim and vitality. Thiazi was an evil, shape-shifting giant who coveted Idun’s magic apples. One day in the shape of an eagle, Thiazi captured Loki, the trickster god. After torturing him for a while, Thiazi exacted a promise from Loki to lure Idun and her basket of apples across the rainbow bridge from forever-young Asgard into Midgard, the world where mortal men squabbled and made war and suffered and died. The next time that Loki saw Idun, he made up a story about a fabulous tree he’d found in the forest, a tree that bore golden fruit that might also contain the gene for unending youth. Trusting as a child, Idun hung a basket of her marvelous apples over her arm and went with Loki to have a look at this new variety. But as soon as she crossed the bridge into Midgard, Thiazi swooped down and nabbed her. He whisked her away to his aerie in the land of the giants where he vowed to live forever while the gods back in Asgard withered and aged.

  Sometime in the wee hours, Dinah dozed off and didn’t wake up until her travel alarm clock blatted. Seven o’clock. It would be morning if there were such a thing as morning in this neck of the woods. There weren’t even any woods. She shut off the alarm and listened in vain for sounds of combat coming from the room next door, hopeful that Erika had returned during the night. Maybe she had had a change of heart and called her husband. Maybe they had both swallowed some camels and the two of them were reunited and canoodling quietly—she vowing to abstain from alcohol forever after, he vowing to forsake dreams of the White House. If she had returned, the American delegation would be preparing to leave Longyearbyen bright and…well, early anyway. As soon as a crew could be rounded up to clear a runway.

  Dinah shambled to the window and looked out. It was as black as she remembered. Black with those aggravating little blue Christmas lights that automatically set off a melancholy reprise of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” inside her head. Small wonder Erika had fallen off the wagon. The statistics for alcoholism in the Arctic in winter must be staggering. Suicide, too. She thought, if I woke up to this scene every morning, I’d kill myself. She hummed a few bars of “Here Comes the Sun,” but it did nothing to lighten her mood.

  Thor’s POLITI car was nowhere in sight. She wasn’t sure if that boded good news or bad for Erika’s return. She had fallen asleep before she learned whether Idun made it back to Asgard. In the end things usually worked out well for gods and goddesses. She hoped things worked out well for Erika. As for the senator, she wasn’t sure what to hope for him or what to make of his emoting. His tears had touched her, but she couldn’t overlook the fact that he was using his office to pull strings for Tillcorp with a foreign government and lying about it, or if not actually lying, he was keeping his efforts on Tillcorp’s behalf under wraps. What’s more, if Tillcorp was bribing Dybdahl as Thor suspected, Sheridan probably knew and condoned it.

  Her arm hurt worse this morning than it did yesterday. She dragged into the bathroom, swallowed two Ibuprofens, and turned on the shower. On second thought, she probably shouldn’t get her bandages wet. She gave herself a sponge bath with some of the Radisson’s citron, honey, and goat milk body wash and studied her reflection in the mirror. She felt as if she’d aged ten years in the last forty-eight hours. There were dark circles under her eyes and, was it her imagination or had she begun to lose color? She was part Indian, for crying out loud. She held a warm washcloth over her eyes for a long time. When she was through, she moisturized with the Radisson’s Thermo-Active moisturizer and began to feel a little less Asgardian and shriveled with age.

  Back in the bedroom, she plugged in the coffee maker and turned on the TV. The English language station that she found carried no news about Erika Sheridan. It carried no news about Svalbard at all. There was a great deal
of talk about the European debt crisis and turmoil in the Euro zone. A Norwegian commentator couldn’t help but be smug that Norway had its own currency. She considered calling Sheridan’s room to ask him about Erika, but decided that would be too presumptuous. When she was completely awake and caffeinated, she would seek out Valerie or Tipton. They would have stayed tuned to the Sheridan drama all night without rest. One or the other of them could fill her in on what had transpired while she slept.

  Valerie had exacted a promise not to talk to the press about being shot and Sheridan had exacted a promise not to talk about Erika’s make-believe daughter. But the more she thought about all this secrecy and high emotion, the more suspicious she became. She hadn’t seen Erika since she handed her the white parka day before yesterday. Erika might be laboring under the delusion that her daughter had been kidnapped, but what if Erika herself had been kidnapped? She could have been smuggled out of the hotel before last night and all of this angst and high emotion was just play-acting, part of an elaborate cover-up. From Valerie’s perspective, Erika was the number one impediment to Colt Sheridan’s coronation. With her gone—

  Oh, for heaven’s sakes, Dinah. You’re turning into one of those conspiracy nuts.

  The phone rang and she flinched. What were the odds this was good news calling? She held her hand over the receiver, hesitating. But what if it was Thor? Or Erika? She took a sip of coffee and picked up.

  “Hello?”

  “Looks like this trip’s turned into a game changer.” Norris Frye chortled. “Golden Boy’s lost his better half and his team’s in an uproar. I’m waiting for a call-back from the White House. Leaked to the right people, this could send Colt Sheridan into a tailspin and throw the rest of the Republican field into disarray. I saw Keyes and Mahler come out of your room around midnight. What dirt can you give me?”

  “No dirt. Everyone’s worried is all.”

  “You can say that again. I just came up from the lobby. Valerie Ives demanded to look at the hotel register and what she saw got her all excited. She bugged off to find Sheridan and I asked ‘em at the desk what was the name that grabbed her. Maks Jorgen. Ever hear of him?”