Death & the Viking's Daughter

by Loretta Ross

  “Spoilsport. Fine! I’m serious. This is my serious face.” Randy leaned on the desk and glared at his brother balefully. “Tell me what you figured out.”

  Looking at him, Death couldn’t help but laugh.

  “What I figured out,” he said, “is that there’s only been one time—so far as I’ve been able to ascertain—when it would’ve been not only possible but easy to switch the paintings.”

  “And that time was …?”

  “When they took it down to x-ray it.”

  Randy blinked, sat up, and frowned at him. “But there’d have been no opportunity. I thought you said the lab techs packed it into a shipping crate and put it directly into the back of their van. And then took it from there directly to the lab to start testing it?”

  “That’s what I said all right.”

  “Oooh.” Randy nodded but his tone was skeptical. “You think the lab techs stole it?”

  “It’s the best explanation I can think of. Say they already have the copy packed in an identical shipping carton in the back of the van. They slide the real portrait in next to it. When they reach the lab, they just pull out the copy instead.”

  “But when they x-ray it …”

  “They’re just the impartial scientists who discovered it was a forgery. Who would ever suspect them of being involved in the theft?”

  “You mean besides a crazy jarhead?” Randy crossed his arms and slouched in his chair. “I don’t know, man.”

  “Don’t know? Don’t know? What do you mean you don’t know?”

  “I mean, yeah. That would work and I can see it happening if this were a story. But for real life, it just seems a little farfetched. What I mean is, why are a couple of lab technicians going to want an obscure and not very valuable painting?”

  “Yeah, I know. I figure they probably were just the hired help. Someone bribed them or blackmailed them or something. Whoever that was, they’re the one we really want.”

  “But who could it have been?”

  “That I don’t know.” Death sighed. “Cecily Myers is a possibility. Hans Volkmer is important to her and it would have to be a thrill to have one of his paintings, even if she could never show it to anyone.”

  “Where’s a grad student going to get the money to bribe someone to steal something for her? And where did she get the forgery? Did she paint it herself ?”

  “I don’t know. But she might not have had to pay them. Not in money, anyway.”

  “Ah. How sordid. And do you have any actual evidence for this, or …?”

  “No,” Death admitted. “And I don’t really think that’s what happened anyway.”

  “No?”

  “No. You see, when I was discussing this with Doris Keystone, she told me about three other instances in the past two years where some not-terribly-valuable collectible was replaced with a copy. She didn’t think those cases were related to this one because none of the other items were paintings.”

  “But you think they are?”

  “Someone replacing a worthless collectible with a copy is weird. The same weird thing happens four times in the space of two years, there has to be a connection.”

  “So what are you going to do now?”

  “I’m going to look at the other three cases. I’m going to look for a common denominator.”

  “I haven’t seen you around these parts for a while.”

  Edgar Morgan looked up from the paperback he was reading. It was still early—not yet six a.m.—and the diner was nearly empty. East Bledsoe Ferry Police Chief Duncan Reynolds was standing beside his table.

  Edgar greeted him with a smile. “Pull up a chair.”

  “Thanks. I can’t stay long.” Duncan dragged a chair over and lowered himself into it. “You’re meeting Salvy?”

  “Yup. Doing a little fishing. Gonna take his boat out one last time before the weather gets too cold. I’m sure you’d be welcome to join us.”

  “Wish I could. I can’t stay long. I just stopped to tell you Salvy’s running a little late. He caught a drunk driver on his way over here and he’s got to do the paperwork and hand him off to the chief deputy.”

  “I’m in no hurry,” Edgar said. He brandished his novel. “I’ve got Louis L’Amour to keep me company.”

  “Where’s the missus?”

  “Still asleep. I had to sneak out on tiptoe this morning so I wouldn’t wake up my girls.”

  Reynolds grinned at the mental image of the huge man walking on tiptoe. “So how’s the vagabond lifestyle treating you? Do you like it as much as you thought you would?”

  “It’s good,” Edgar said. “It’s really good. It’s had its ups and downs, of course. Got lost in the Appalachians during a thunderstorm. I’d prefer to never do that again.”

  “You think you’ll ever settle down again?”

  “I think we might. We’ve been talking about it. Maybe just a winter base. A little place to hole up during the cold months, then come spring we’ll go wandering again. It would be nice to have a place to come home to.”

  The waitress came by with a refill for Edgar’s coffee. Reynolds declined her offer of a cup and waited until she’d walked away. He drummed his fingers on the table and asked the question he was really wondering.

  “So what do you think of your future son-in-law?”

  Edgar shrugged, carefully noncommittal. “Don’t really know enough to think anything yet. What do you think? Is there anything you think you need to tell me about him?”

  Reynolds considered the question. “I think,” he said slowly, “that there are an awful lot of things you should know about him. But it’s not really my place to tell you, and I don’t want to talk about him behind his back. Wren will tell you what you need to know, maybe. A lot of what needs to be said are probably things he won’t say. But give him a chance. Take the time to really get to know him before you make up your mind. He’s worth the investment.”

  He saw Salvy pull up outside the window and rose to leave. He turned back, though, before he’d taken three steps.

  “I will tell you one thing. I think an awful lot of that young man.”

  Edgar gave him an impish grin. “So does my daughter, or so it seems.”

  Reynolds grinned back. “That she does,” he agreed. “That she does.”

  The auction barn at the Rives County Fairgrounds had been designed by people who knew barns. For the ten days of the fair every July, the loft held animal feed and extra bedding and the main floor was divided into rows of pens with portable rails. For the rest of the year, the loft held the portable rails and the main floor of the barn served as a venue for 4-H meetings, community dances, an occasional wedding, and the weekly consignment auctions.

  It was Keystone and Sons’ week to host the consignment auction and the whole company was there to help. Leona and Doris were making a record of who brought in which item. Sam and Roy, with a couple of their older sons, were trying to figure out a bug in the speaker system, and Wren was helping some of the younger men set up tables and find a place for everything. There was already a good crowd on hand and it promised to be a fun and profitable auction.

  Wren was wrestling a large air compressor into place when a little old man on a red motorized scooter nearly ran her over. He was slight, with pale blue eyes and blond hair turning white. He wore beige slacks and a light pink button-down and looked like somebody’s kindly grandfather.

  She jumped back. “Hey!”

  “Stay out of the way,” the old man said, unrepentant.

  “Don’t run over people,” she returned.

  “I won’t if they stay out of my way.” He wheeled his scooter back around so that he was facing her. “Listen, are you the company that’s handling the auction out at Cold Creek Harbor?”

  “The old yacht club? Yes, we’re doing that sale.”

 
“Supper club,” he said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “It wasn’t a yacht club. It was a supper club. There’s a difference. Get it right.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I was under the impression that they had boats there.”

  “Of course we did.”

  “Okaaay …”

  “A supper club on a body of water can have boats, you know. That doesn’t make them a yacht club.”

  “But don’t yacht clubs also have restaurants a lot of the time?”

  “Well, certainly.

  “So what’s the difference between them?”

  “A supper club is classier, obviously.”

  “Okay, well … glad we’ve cleared that up. If you’ll excuse me?”

  Wren turned back to her work but the old man wasn’t finished yet. “Listen, I need to talk to you.”

  “Sure. What about?”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “No, sorry. Oh my God! Are you having amnesia?” Wren knew he hadn’t meant it like that, but she’d always wanted to respond to that question that way.

  “Of course not. Don’t be foolish. My name is Claudio Bender. I used to own that supper club. I was the one who had it built, in fact.”

  “Oh, that’s very interesting. It’s nice to meet you.” Wren offered him her hand but Bender didn’t take it, and for a long minute she stood there with it stuck out in front of her before dropping it. “Okay, never mind.”

  “Listen,” he said again. “I need to talk to you.”

  “I’m right here.”

  “When I owned that building, I lost a red-gold ring in the shape of an eagle. I need to know if you’ve found it.”

  “Not so far as I know,” she said. “We’ll certainly keep an eye out for it. But of course, if we find it, you’ll have to talk to the current owner about getting it back.”

  “But it’s my ring.”

  “It was your ring. You sold the building with all contents, so technically you don’t own it anymore.”

  “Weren’t you paying attention? I’m Claudio Bender.”

  “And I’m very happy for you. But I still can’t give you something we’ve been entrusted to auction off without the express consent of the person we’re conducting the auction for. But, hey! If it goes on the block, you’re more than welcome to bid.”

  “You’re a foolish girl. I’m going to talk to your superior.”

  “You just go right ahead.”

  He started to roll away and Wren thought of something. “Hey,” she called after him. “Can I ask you something?”

  Claudio turned back, annoyed. “I suppose so.”

  “Do you remember the afternoon in 1978 when one of your guests thought he saw his daughter’s ghost?”

  Claudio wheeled his scooter around and came back to her.

  “How do you know about that? Have you been being nosy? You should stay out of things that don’t concern you. It’s rude. It doesn’t matter anyway. He didn’t see anything. There was nothing there. I suspect the man was drunk. These academics never can hold their liquor, you know.”

  “So you didn’t see anything?”

  “Not a thing. We sent my son to search the woods, as I recall. He didn’t even find anything to suggest anyone had even been there.”

  “But Dr. Larsen’s daughter disappeared that weekend. Doesn’t that strike you as a little odd?”

  “I suppose. But I really don’t see how it has anything to do with us. And I don’t know why you want to waste my time talking about something that happened before you were born when you won’t even promise to give me my ring back.”

  “I’m just curious.”

  “An unattractive trait in young women. You’ll never catch a man that way.”

  “I already have a man. And the reason I’m curious is because Ingrid Larsen disappeared from a Renaissance festival where she was acting the part of a Viking maiden. And last week, two of the Keystone children found a Viking maiden’s costume hidden in one of the lockers in the boathouse loft.”

  “That’s ridiculous. Where is it? I want to see it.”

  “I turned it over to the sheriff’s office. They’ve sent it to the state crime lab for testing.”

  “Why on earth would you do a thing like that?”

  “Because,” Wren said, “the skirt and the pinafore were caked with blood.”

  eleven

  Emily Morgan stopped on the sidewalk and studied the entryway. On the north side of the East Bledsoe Ferry town square, next to the Renbeau Bros. Department Store, stood a plain wooden door with a glass window. The sign on the window read, in neat lettering, Bogart Investigations. Beneath the name there was a phone number, and that was all.

  Through the door she could see a steep staircase climbing up to the apartments above the department store. There was a small rectangular mailbox beside the door and on the wall inside there was a row of coat hooks, two of them occupied. She tried the door and it opened, jangling a little bell overhead. Emily huffed in a quick breath and let it out again, and then began to climb toward her future son-in-law’s office.

  Emily had done this whole “engaged” thing with Wren before. Just after her daughter graduated from college, she’d announced that she was marrying her high school sweetheart, a charming young man named Cameron Michaels, of whom Emily was very fond.

  Cameron was a reporter for the local newspaper. He was neat, tidy, polite, an immaculate dresser, and had professed a dedication to abstaining from premarital sex, of which Emily had whole-heartedly approved. Unfortunately, it turned out that all his best attributes existed because he was, in fact, gay. Shortly before the wedding the burden of this secret became too much for him. The rehearsal dinner was dramatic and memorable, and the wedding, of course, never happened.

  While Wren had been supportive of Cameron and they remained close friends, she’d also been deeply shaken by the fiasco and it had taken her some time to jump back into the dating scene. Her mother, of course, had hoped that she’d pull herself together and get on with her life, but she’d never expected Wren to get engaged again to the first charming rogue who came along.

  A charming rogue who had yet to make the slightest mention of his son by another woman.

  “Death Bogart,” she muttered under her breath. “Sounds like a character on a soap opera. I bet that isn’t even his real name.”

  The steps ended in another door. This one was standing open, and Emily went into the office beyond. Death’s brother Randy was there, dressed in sweats. Long and lean, he stood with one leg up on a corner of the desk, tying a running shoe. He saw her and his face lit with an open, easy smile.

  “Hey, Mrs. M! What are you doing here?”

  “Oh, I just thought I’d come down and see where you boys work. So this is your office, is it?”

  “Uh, yeah. Well, it’s Death’s office. Also his apartment, through that door. I’m just staying with him until I find a place of my own.”

  “You don’t work together?”

  “No, ma’am. This is Death’s business. I’m an air medic with the medevac air ambulance service.”

  “Oh.” She was impressed in spite of herself. “But you don’t have your own apartment?”

  “Not just yet,” he said. “I just moved here from St. Louis a couple of months ago.” He finished lacing up his shoe and tying it and turned to pound on the interior door that led to Death’s apartment.

  “Hey! Are you decent? Wren’s mom is here.”

  There was a flurry of footsteps and then Death yanked the door open and stuck his head out. He had a toothbrush sticking out of the corner of his mouth. His short hair was wet and there were traces of shaving cream on his face. He tried to speak, realized he had a toothbrush in his mouth, and made a face while holding up his index finger in a “just a minute” gesture.
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br />   He disappeared, and when he reappeared a moment later he was wiping his face with a towel. He tossed it over his shoulder and addressed her anxiously.

  “Hi. Good morning. Um, is anything wrong?”

  “No, of course not. Why should anything be wrong?”

  “I just … I don’t know. I wasn’t expecting you.”

  “She just wanted to see where you work,” Randy said. “For a given value of work, that is.”

  Death glared at his brother. “Ixnay on the artasserysmay.”

  “I see you’re both versed in cryptography,” Emily said dryly. Both boys had the grace to look abashed.

  “Hey, come on in,” Death said. “Help yourself to a seat. Would you like some coffee?” He crossed to a coffeemaker on a side counter, picked up the empty carafe, and turned it upside down as if that would somehow make coffee magically appear.

  “You didn’t start the coffee?” he asked his brother. “Why didn’t you start the coffee?”

  “I didn’t want any coffee. I’m going running. Why don’t you start the coffee? It’s not hard. All you have to do is put coffee in that little basket and then pour water into the top.”

  “I know how to make coffee.”

  “Well then, why don’t you do it instead of standing there grousing about it?”

  “You know, I’ve had puppies that act like you two,” Emily told them.

  The brothers stood stock still for a moment and just looked at her. Then Death waved the empty carafe.

  “I’m just gonna start some coffee,” he said.

  Emily crossed to the desk and Randy hurried to pull a chair around and hold it for her. She rewarded him with a bright smile as Death came back from his apartment with a full container of water. He poured it into the top of the coffee maker, put the empty pot on the pad underneath, and turned to lean against the counter and face her while it brewed behind him.

  “So,” Randy asked her, “are you all alone? Where’s Mr. Morgan today?”

  “Oh, he left early to go fishing with the sheriff again. They’re old friends, you know.”

  “So I’ve heard,” Death said. “I don’t know him well, but from what I’ve heard, Salvy seems like a great guy.”