Pasternak, the horse trainer, had gone to Louisville, Kentucky. A logical choice. Krupkin and Orlov, the butler and the valet, had each chosen Los Angeles. Doctor Yakovlev had found work in Boston. In 1920, Chopiak, the baker, had lived in the same city where he’d died, New Haven, Connecticut. Nikita Novikova and his family had settled in Burlington, Colorado, where Grandpa Nick was listed as an “amusement park worker,” and Lydia was a “seamstress.” They had a young son named Nikita Junior.
“Nikita Junior must have grown up to be Stasia’s father,” I told my aunt, “and listen to what became of Krupkin, the butler,” I said. “He’s listed as a motion picture actor in Los Angeles, California. Do you suppose he got a job playing a butler in the silent movies?”
“I wouldn’t be one bit surprised,” she said. “Doctor Yakovlev is listed as a laboratory worker. I wonder if he was eventually able to work as a doctor in America. Later we can look them all up again in the 1930 census and see what became of them.” She smiled. “This is fun, isn’t it?”
“It really is. You have Orlov, the valet, on your list. What happened to him?”
“He was listed as an actor too, same as Krupkin.” She closed her laptop. “Well, that takes care of the first five years our Russian friends spent here. Time for me to start making cookies.”
While she bustled around the kitchen, measuring and mixing, I Googled Colorado amusement parks. Up came the name of a park in Denver where, from 1905 until 1927, there’d been a stationary carousel featuring carved horses, all “standers” like my horse. In 1928, that old carousel was sold and delivered to an amusement park in the city of Burlington. So Grandpa Nick, “amusement park worker,” would have had an opportunity to display his carving skill by repairing and maintaining those carousel horses. That made me smile. I was beginning to feel as though I knew the old man. I searched further and found that the old carousel had once again been restored and was open to the public right there in Burlington, Colorado.
“I’ll bet Grandpa Nick would have been proud to know that horses he worked on are still carrying kids around.” I remembered how I’d loved the merry-go-round at the Salem Willows. My horse must have been one he made for the Salem carousel.
“I heard that Macy’s Department Store in New York City bought the old Willows merry-go-round,” my aunt said, reading my thoughts as she sometimes does. “I wonder how your horse got left behind.”
“Colleen said her grandfather still had some work to do on it. He said someday he’d put it back where it belonged.”
“Quite likely when he learned it was going to be part of Macy’s Christmas display, he gave up on that idea.” It wasn’t long before the smell of cookies baking wafted through the air. Aunt Ibby placed a couple of wire racks onto the table.
“Are we just going to go over there and barge in with a plate of cookies?” I asked. “Won’t that seem odd?”
My aunt made a “tsk-tsk” sound. “Certainly not. I thought I’d raised you better than to even think we’d ever be so impolite. I phoned Mrs. McKenna yesterday. Thanked her for being so kind to you and Pete and asked if we might call on her at . . .” She paused and glanced at the clock. “. . . at two o’clock this afternoon.”
“‘Call on her.’” I laughed. “That sounds so Victorian.”
“I know. It is. Nobody knows how to refuse when you say it that way.” The oven timer dinged and she put the pan of perfectly browned treats across the racks to cool. “Try it sometime. You’ll see. Now scoot along upstairs and put on a calling-on-the-neighbors outfit while I find a nice, little basket for the Snickerdoodles.”
I did as she asked, retaining jeans but exchanging my NASCAR T-shirt for a plain white blouse, which seemed suitable for the occasion. As I walked back through the living room, I saw O’Ryan sitting in the zebra print chair, his back to me, pointedly ignoring the teddy bear pencil sharpener on the floor. I shook my head, picked up poor Teddy and put him back on the shelf. “Now you think this is just a game, don’t you? A cute, little, harmless bronzed teddy bear has nothing to do with anything. Stop it! Do you hear me?” Big, innocent golden eyes looked my way for an instant, then closed as the cat assumed a Sphinx-like position. “You big fake,” I said. “Try to behave yourself while I’m gone.”
At five minutes before two, appropriately dressed, Aunt Ibby and I started around the block to Williams Street, arriving at the McKennas’ front door, the basket of still-warm cookies safely tucked beneath a red-and-white-checked napkin, at precisely two o’clock. Colleen McKenna answered about a second after I pushed the doorbell. She must have been standing in the front hall waiting for us.
“Come in, come in.” Colleen was all smiles. “Glad to see you again, Lee. And I know you’re Ms. Russell. You don’t remember me, but I used to see you in the library all the time back when I was in college.”
Aunt Ibby squinted up her eyes for a moment, then widened them. “Of course. You were studying early-childhood development. Planning a teaching career, right?” She handed the basket to the woman. “We thought you might enjoy some cookies.”
“Thank you so much.” Colleen looked both pleased and amazed by my aunt’s accurate memory. I was pretty impressed by it myself. “That’s right. I taught kindergarten for quite awhile, then I got married and the boys came along.” She shrugged. “But enough about me. I know you’re both interested in this old house. Mother thought Miss Russell might like to see the egg that the old man carved, and I have something special to show you too. We were both so happy to get your call.”
We followed her down a long, narrow hall wallpapered in a brown-and-white pastoral toile pattern, with framed photos in even rows.
“This has been a day full of surprises for us,” Colleen continued. “My mother’s in the kitchen.” She turned a corner into a bright yellow room, where two women sat at a long maple harvest table, where the carved nested eggs were lined up in a neat row. “You won’t believe who arrived about an hour ago.”
Mrs. McKenna stood facing us with a broad, welcoming grin. The other woman remained seated, and turned slowly in our direction. She wore what would certainly pass as proper calling-on-the-neighbors attire, with her orange hair neatly twisted into a bun. She smiled.
Just behind where the woman sat in that pleasant room, there was a glass-fronted china cabinet. Without warning came the pinpoints of light, the swirl of color. This vision was no harmless teddy bear. Instead, a real bear, black and fierce, mouth open, teeth bared, glared at me over Stasia Novikova’s shoulder.
CHAPTER 23
I blinked and the thing was gone. Only Stasia and the glass-fronted cabinet were there. No scary bear.
“Hello, Lee,” Stasia said. “You look surprised to see me.”
I was damned sure I looked surprised. This so-called gift of mine has never been a welcome one, and compared to other visions I’ve seen since I’d discovered that I was a scryer, that bear was, by far, the most terrifying.
Mrs. McKenna saved me from having to answer right away. She moved forward quickly, extending her hand to my aunt. “You’re Miss Russell! Lennie was so excited about meeting you the other day. And, of course, we’ve met Lee and her handsome gentleman friend. Do I smell cookies? You shouldn’t have. Colleen, put the cookies on a plate. Come and sit down, everybody. Look. Our old friend Stasia has come by to visit. Her grandfather used to live in this very house. Stasia, did you say you know Lee?” The woman barely paused for breath. “We haven’t seen Stasia for years. So many years. Stasia and Colleen were best friends when they were children. Miss Russell, this is Stasia Novikova, and I guess you’ve met my daughter, Colleen. Can I offer you some tea?”
Her breathless monologue gave me time to recover from the nightmare image I’d just seen reflected in the cabinet glass. I managed a polite response, shook hands with Mrs. McKenna and Stasia, then sat beside Colleen. As her mother poured tea, I listened as my aunt steered the conversation back to Stasia’s grandfather.
“How very interesting. Colle
en and Stasia must share so many lovely childhood memories of this house and especially of Mr. Novikova—such a talented gentleman.” She pointed to the row of graduated eggs. “Like these. Thanks to a lucky bid at a storage locker auction, Lee and I have a few examples of his handiwork too.”
“I saw you at that locker sale,” Stasia said in a matter-of-fact tone.
We all turned toward her, perhaps expecting her to say something else about it. But she didn’t. It was one of those moments when everyone has stopped speaking. Awkward silence. Colleen grabbed the cookie plate and passed it to me. “These look delicious.”
“My aunt is a wonderful cook. She’s writing a cookbook.”
That somehow got the conversation going once more. “No kidding. What kind of cookbook?”
Aunt Ibby gave a quick rundown of the history of the Tabitha Trumbull recipe collection. “So you see,” she summed up, “family history, family keepsakes, can sometimes be brought together—sometimes in book form, sometimes as a collection of objects—which may interest present generations and generations yet to be born. This lovely carved egg, for instance.” She touched the smallest egg gently.
“I get it.” Mrs. McKenna reached for her third cookie. “You’ve put together Tabitha Trumbull’s recipes so that not only the people in her family can enjoy them, but so can hundreds of other people. And”—she held up one finger—“if we can put together all we know about Grandpa Nick . . . Mr. Novikova and the things he made, like my beautiful egg and the matryoshka dolls, it could be interesting to all kinds of people.”
“That’s why it’s so great that you happened to come here today, Stasia.” Colleen reached across the table and clasped her old friend’s hand. Stasia smiled briefly. “You can fill in the blanks, and maybe if Miss Russell writes it all down, someday you’ll be in a book too!”
Stasia shook her head. “I don’t want to be in a book. I just want to know what became of all my grandmother’s things. She gave me the doll, but she couldn’t remember where she’d put the clothes.”
I heard my aunt’s sharp intake of breath. I thought she was about to speak, to tell Stasia not to worry, that she had the clothes and they were safe. But Stasia hadn’t finished. “By then, she thought I was Anastasia. I mean, my name is Anastasia, but she thought I was the real one. The Grand Duchess Anastasia. Imagine that! Me! Crazy, old Stasia. A grand duchess. That’s why my grandmother gave me the doll. Anastasia, the real one, was supposed to get it back when she escaped to America.”
My aunt gave me what I think of as her ah-ha look. Maybe our story about the czar planning an escape from Russia wasn’t so far-fetched, after all.
“Those poor children.” Mrs. McKenna looked genuinely sad. “Never got away at all. But it was nice, Stasia, that Lydia believed Anastasia had escaped. It must have given her great comfort to give you that doll.”
“Maybe.” Stasia spoke sharply then. “Lee, I know you got that dumb, old horse. That’s how I knew it was the right locker.”
“I did keep the horse,” I said, “but you probably saw what happened to it if you’ve been watching the news. It’s in pieces and I don’t even know what they were looking for in it.”
“They wasted their time anyway, didn’t they?” Stasia smiled. “It was empty, wasn’t it? Darned horse was empty, after all. Everybody got fooled.”
Stasia reached into a side pocket of the gray silk dress and pulled out the now-familiar wrapped oblong. She popped the gum into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully for a moment, then blew a large pink bubble. She leaned back in the chair, inhaling the thing. “Stupid horse.”
“Your grandfather carved it, Stasia.” My aunt spoke softly. “That makes it special, doesn’t it?”
“I guess so. I was sorry when he died. My parents came for the funeral, and to take me home. They didn’t want to leave me with my grandmother. Right after he died, she got kind of . . .” She shrugged. “You know.”
“She didn’t live very long after that,” Mrs. McKenna said. “She was a little confused is all. She wasn’t crazy or anything, Stasia. She used to talk about you all the time. She called you by your given name. Anastasia. Thought the world of you. Then after she passed, your father came back here again and went through all their stuff with a fine-tooth comb, I swear. He took a few things and I guess he gave the rest of it to St. Vladimir’s. At least that’s what he told us when he sold us this house. The whole upstairs and the basement were clean as a whistle when we passed papers on the place.”
“I know. I remember.” Stasia’s eyes grew misty.
“Why didn’t you write to me anymore? And when you came back to Salem, why didn’t you call me?” Colleen looked about to cry too. “And why did you really come here today? After all this time?”
“I came to warn you.” Stasia wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Boris Medvedev is here. I saw his picture on TV. If he knows about this house, he may come here. See, he thought there was something in the horse too. He might think you have what he’s looking for.”
“What is it?” I asked, wanting to shake her. “What is he looking for?”
“I don’t know.” She looked into my eyes. “They never told me.”
CHAPTER 24
Aunt Ibby was instantly busy on her smartphone. She didn’t even try to hide it under the table. “Boris Medvedev,” she said. “A professional wrestler in the late 1950s. Is that the Boris you’re talking about, Stasia?”
“Yes. That’s him. An old friend of the family. My dad liked wrestling.” She laughed, but it was the kind of snorting laugh that wasn’t one bit funny. “He looked a lot different in that picture on TV. The beard and the wrinkles. He was good-looking when he was young. He’s really old now. But that’s him.”
“Medvedev,” I said aloud. I remembered that Chef Karl had said he didn’t know Boris’s last name, and I thought about what Scott had said about the bearded man looking familiar. Scott had been a young sports reporter back then. Makes sense he would know something about professional wrestlers. It only took a couple of seconds for me to text Pete.
It wasn’t a long message. I texted Boris Medvedev wrestler and returned to the conversation. “I don’t think these people need to worry about the bearded man, Stasia. It’s been so many years since your grandparents lived here, I doubt very much that he’d expect to find anything of value.” I mentally crossed my fingers and vowed to ask Pete to ask for an extra patrol car to keep an eye on the McKennas, just in case. “We were talking about your grandmother? Lydia?”
“Hope you’re right about that,” Colleen said. “Sure wouldn’t want to run into him. But look, I brought my tablecloth with me. Thought you might like to see it. It’s really beautiful work.” She opened a canvas bag and brought out a large tissue-wrapped square.
The tablecloth was a big one. Heavy too. We each automatically moved our teacups out of the way as she spread it, partially unfolded, on the tabletop. Colorful embroidery covered most of the surface. This wasn’t the typical decorated-around-the-border, preprinted needlework project.
“What an amazing piece of work!” my aunt exclaimed. “Look at the detail. Flowers and birds and buildings.”
“When my boys were little, I taught them their alphabet and simple numbers from it,” Colleen pointed to capital letters in seemingly random arrangements, and fancifully formed numerals here and there among the flowers and birds and animals. “Lydia gave it to me because I was a kindergarten teacher. She knew I’d appreciate it.”
“We were lucky that she gave us the things she did,” Mrs. McKenna offered. “Otherwise, I guess all these beautiful handmade treasures would have gone to St. Vladimir’s and wound up in that abandoned storage locker.”
“I’ve been going to all the locker auctions around here for over a year,” Stasia said. “I knew Grandpa Nick’s things had to turn up eventually.”
“How’d you know that?” I asked.
“When I came back to Salem, I began looking for my doll clothes. I went to se
e the priest at St. Vladimir’s. He’s young. Didn’t know my grandfather. He said that Grandpa’s stuff had been stored in the church basement for ages, but after the old priest retired, it all got sent to a storage locker. He didn’t know exactly where.” Stasia chewed her gum thoughtfully for a moment. “I have a friend who does the bookkeeping at St. Vladimir’s. She told me that somebody had agreed to pay the locker rental, so it was off their books. That would have been my dad. After I heard that he’d died, I figured the time would be up sometime this year.”
“I wonder if that old priest is still living,” my aunt said. “I remember him. Father Richard. I guess your grandparents went to his church?”
“Sure. There’s a big Russian community here in Salem. Most of them go to St. Vladimir’s. Grandpa Nick and Father Richard used to play chess together right in this house. I’m pretty sure he’s still living. It would’ve been a big deal at church if he’d died.”
“We went to the tearoom next to the church the other day,” I said. “Seems to be a popular place. Wonderful pastries. We’ll be going back for a full meal soon.”
“Have the blinchik.” Mrs. McKenna rubbed her hands together. “Duck with pomegranate. To die for.”
“The latkes are my favorite,” said Colleen.
“Mine too.” Stasia smiled at her old friend.
“Do you know Chef Karl?” my aunt asked of no one in particular.
All three women nodded. “Everybody likes Karl,” Mrs. McKenna said. “That restaurant was a big flop until he took over. Watery borscht. Canned strawberries in the Romanoff. Disgusting.”
“Karl made the place a success.” Colleen began to fold her tablecloth. “The Rotary Club even eats there every month.”
Murder Go Round Page 15
