“Which is what we all suspect anyway,” I said.
“Exactly.”
I shook my head. “Man. Little friendly competition to see who could own the most land didn’t end too well.”
“No, not at all. Because Brian’s dead, if Roberta killed him she’ll go to jail. If she didn’t, she can’t buy the land, and that means that Kimberly Canton will. And our town comes that much closer to being Ms. Canton’s resort town. I don’t see that anybody wins.”
“Nah, me, neither.”
We were quiet a minute. Rudy got up and walked out to the field to see the llamas. They were such unusual creatures. Sort of gangly and yet graceful at the same time. They reminded me of ostriches with four legs, and they had the longest lashes I’ve ever seen on a creature. I took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Aunt Sissy.”
“For what?”
“I’m sorry if there’s trouble between you and Uncle Joe over the whole wolf thing. I’m sorry that you’re … sick. And I’m sorry that I didn’t solve your mystery.”
Her eyes glistened a little. But Aunt Sissy in all her gruffness bulled right through it, not allowing a moment for emotion. “Not your fault I’m sick. And you did solve the mystery. You found out who wrote the diary, and you found out how it ended. So far as Joe is concerned, well … yeah, that’s your fault, but he’ll get over it.”
“Yeah, as soon as I’m gone, he’s going to go join the hunt. Isn’t he?”
She looked straight at me. “You want me to answer that, or you want to have some hope?”
“Don’t answer it,” I said.
I was quiet again for a few minutes, enjoying the smell of lilacs and barbecue, pine, and … horse manure. “What do you think it was like for Anna Bloomquist when the wolves were killed? I mean, what was it really like?”
“I imagine she was horrified.”
“You think her father and brother helped to kill the wolves? You know, they were farmers, too.”
“I don’t know,” she said and shrugged. “That never occurred to me. I imagine they would have.”
“It would have been all the more traumatizing,” I said.
“Yeah. In some ways, Anna didn’t seem like she existed in the real world. It was almost as if she was living … a fantasy.”
“Yeah, like … everything was more real for her than it was for others. She felt joy more. She felt terror more.”
Aunt Sissy nodded.
“I wish I could have solved all of it.”
“You mean, who killed Konrad and Isaac?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought you said it was Isabelle Lansdowne. She had all of that motive.”
“I know, but I can’t prove it. Besides, there’s one thing that bothers me.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m still worried about how Isabelle was able to hang her brother,” I said. “Physically, it doesn’t seem like she could have managed it.”
“Maybe her husband, seeing the opportunity to get rich or richer, helped her. Who knows, maybe he’s the one who actually did it. Maybe they did it together.”
“Yeah, I thought about that, too.”
The crunch of wheels on gravel sounded from the side of the house. Uncle Joe lifted up a hand and waved. I’m not sure why, but I was half expecting Sheriff Aberg to come walking around the building. Instead it was Mayor Tom Hujinak. Uncle Joe introduced him to my stepfather. Rudy was still out in the field somewhere looking at the llamas. Mayor Tom raised a hand at us on the porch.
“I took a picture in front,” he said to Aunt Sissy.
“That’s fine,” she said. “You here for your tour?”
“Yup,” he said.
“Well, come on in,” she said.
We both got up and led the way for Mayor Tom. He followed us in the back door, through the screened-in part of the back porch where my quilt still sat in the frame. I think Aunt Sissy had to set maybe ten more stitches in it, and then hem it, and it would be finished. We came into the kitchen, and Tom Hujinak stopped in his tracks.
“Oh, wow, Sissy. This is totally different.”
“I expect it would be,” she said. “All new cabinets, whole new floor. The moulding is the same, though.”
She led us on a tour of the house then. Started on the first floor, then went to the second floor. It was on the second floor that Mayor Tom started to see some resemblance to the house he had once lived in. He went to the bedroom at the end of the hallway. “This was my room,” he said.
We followed him in, and he turned a complete circle in the middle of the room. “This is pretty much as I remember it, except I had baseball posters hanging on that wall instead of that beautiful dried flower arrangement you’ve got there.”
We laughed at that. He went to the window, lifted it, and looked down. “No roses, but you’ve got plenty of lilacs.”
“They surround the entire house.”
“Do you get a lot of bees because of that?”
“Yeah, but they don’t bother us. Guess we’re all too sour for them to sting.”
“Hope you don’t mind,” he said. He walked over to the closet and indeed it sloped at a fairly steep angle. “The roof.”
“Oh,” I said.
He turned in the closet. “And the brick wall.”
“Brick wall?”
“Part of the original chimney,” he said.
“The original chimney?”
“Yeah, when the house burned, the chimney was still standing, so they just built the house up around it. I think it goes all the way to the cellar,” Aunt Sissy said. “Or it ends right above it.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Thanks, Sissy, for letting me see the place again,” he said.
“Oh, you’re quite welcome.”
“You guys have really turned it into a nice place,” he said. “A lot nicer than when we lived here.”
“Well, you know, umpteen kids during the Depression. Didn’t leave a lot of time or money for home improvement,” Aunt Sissy said.
“You got that right,” he said.
“So, when you heard … the ghost,” I said, “what did you hear?”
“I told you. It was my sister in the next room crying over her boyfriend,” he said and pointed through the closet to the next room.
“The ghost was in your closet?” I asked.
“There was no ghost,” he said.
“I know,” I said. “Just humor me.”
“Okay, the ghost was in my closet.”
“And this chimney ends right above the cellar,” I said.
“Yeah,” Aunt Sissy said.
“I want to see the cellar,” I said with a sudden rush of adrenaline.
“Why?” Mayor Tom asked.
“I want to see if there’s an opening or something down there that might help sound travel up this chimney and into your closet,” I said.
“There is no ghost!” he said.
“I know, I know,” I said. “But I just wanna see.”
“Why?” he asked.
“Because I’m morbid,” I said.
“All right,” Aunt Sissy said. “Let’s go to the cellar. You coming with?”
Mayor Tom turned a pasty white around his mouth. He swallowed. “All right,” he said.
We all three descended the steps, me in the lead because I just suddenly had to see what the cellar looked like, Mayor Tom reluctantly pulling up the rear, and my aunt sandwiched in the middle. Once out on the back porch, Aunt Sissy had to move some things aside and then she pulled the door up and fixed it to a hook on the wall, designed specifically for that. Then she flipped a switch on the wall. “Took us forever to realize that switch was for the light down there.”
“I’ll bet,” I said.
The steps were little more than a ladder. They were actually stairs that descended almost vertically. As I went down the stairs, I had to duck my head so I wouldn’t knock it on the floor of the back porch.
“There is a concrete floor do
wn here now. I don’t think there would have been one when Anna lived here.”
“No, probably not,” Tom said from behind her.
I immediately started itching when I got down in the room. It felt like things were crawling in my hair and up my arms. Psychosomatic, but it’s hard to remember that when your skin is crawling. I was just glad that I was with two other people. I figured they could save me from whatever multilegged thing might attack me.
The room was small, maybe ten feet by ten feet. With a house as big as Aunt Sissy’s one would expect a larger cellar. But that’s not how they did it back in the old days. A cellar was mainly used to store food or to offer protection from tornadoes and dust storms. Not that Minnesota would be bothered by too many dust storms.
The ceiling was barely six feet high, and Mayor Tom sort of held himself in a semihunched position, watching the ceiling for anything that might decide to nest in his hat. I, too, watched the ceiling with keen interest. It didn’t seem to be moving. Yet.
“We turn the light on down here once in a while, just to scare the spiders,” Aunt Sissy said.
I gave a nervous laugh.
“Okay, so you’ve seen the cellar. Let’s go,” Mayor Tom said.
“Wait, where’s the fireplace?”
“It would be right there,” he said and pointed to the ceiling at the end of the cellar.
I walked over and tried to get a good look, but the light cast severe shadows, and the corners of the room were dark. But a spark of light in the ceiling caught my eye. “Wait. One of you run up to the fireplace in the living room.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to stick a pen or something up through this hole and you tell me if you can see it.”
Aunt Sissy went up the steps.
“Are you there yet?” I yelled.
“Yes,” she called back.
I realized that once again in my life, I was not tall enough. Mayor Tom instantly understood and came over and stuck a ballpoint pen through the hole. “You see it?” he yelled.
“No…” she said. “Oh, wait. Yes.”
A minute later she came back down the steps. “Where the brick meets the wall, there’s a small hole in the floor. You can’t really see it, unless you’re looking for it. That might explain where all of our eight-legged friends are coming from.”
“So, what does it mean?” Mayor Tom asked.
I shrugged. “Maybe nothing,” I said. “It’s just that if the door to the cellar were shut, you should be able to hear whoever was in there. It would most likely travel up the brick.”
“So you’re saying there was a ghost,” Mayor Tom said. “Sissy, no offense, but you have the most bizarre family.”
She just shrugged.
“No, I’m not saying that there was a ghost.”
I looked around a moment, and then I was ready to go. Mayor Tom hesitated.
“What?”
He stared at the wall for a second. “What’s that?”
“What’s what?” I asked.
“There’s something written on the wall … I can’t make it out. Sissy, you got a flashlight?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”
I leaned down in front of where he was pointing and tried to see what it was, but I just couldn’t make it out no matter how much I strained my eyes. Aunt Sissy returned with a flashlight and shined it on the wall. There, scraped into the stone were four letters.
P.
A.
Another P. And another A.
Papa.
“Oh, my God, I’m going to be sick,” I said.
“What is it?”
Tears welled in my eyes and my breath came in quick, ragged gasps. “Papa. It was her father.”
“What was her father?” Tom asked.
Aunt Sissy just stared at me, still not comprehending. Why I hadn’t even suspected was beyond me. Anna’s diary talks about how her father was gone from home the night of Konrad Nagel’s murder. Describes her mother’s bizarre behavior afterward. The fact that Sven had been the one to report the deaths. The fact that Karl Bloomquist had not taken his granddaughter in. He had never taken in Emelie Bloomquist because he thought she was dead. Sven had found a couple who would raise her away from Karl, and only when Karl was dead did Sven bring her to live with him. It was Karl whom they had been afraid of all along.
I had to wonder if Anna had figured it out. That her father had been the one to kill her lover and his father.
“Karl Bloomquist killed Konrad, most likely because Konrad refused to let Isaac marry Anna.”
“And then he killed Isaac for getting her pregnant in the first place?” Aunt Sissy asked.
“That would be my guess.”
“Who are you guys talking about?” Mayor Tom asked.
“And then he burned down the house with his daughter and her baby inside, hoping to rid himself of the whole distasteful deed,” Aunt Sissy said.
“Only he didn’t realize his wife was inside. Or maybe he did and by then he didn’t care,” I said.
“Oh, my God,” Aunt Sissy said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Who are you guys talking about?” Mayor Tom insisted.
“Your ghost,” I said. “And her tragic life.”
“There is no ghost,” Tom said.
“I’ve gotta get out of here. The mold and mildew is making me sick,” I said.
“I’m with you,” Mayor Tom said.
Within seconds we were out of the cellar and on the back porch. I shivered from the overwhelming betrayal of it all. I put my head between my knees and just cried. I cried for Anna Bloomquist, who had clawed her killer’s name on the cellar wall as she succumbed to the ghastly black smoke.
“Are you guys gonna tell me what is going on?” Mayor Tom asked.
Aunt Sissy put a hand on my shoulder and I swiped at my tears. I took a deep breath and tried to calm myself. It might not ever stand up in a court of law, but I knew in my gut that Karl Bloomquist was the killer of Konrad and Isaac Nagel and his own daughter and wife.
“Aunt Sissy,” I said.
“Yes?”
“Next time you want to know who wrote something? You find it out for yourself. This has been the most gut-wrenching thing I’ve been through in a long time. And I don’t even know these people!”
“Next time I find an ancient diary, I’m not even going to read it.”
Twenty-six
I tossed and turned all night. Partly because I knew we were leaving the next day, and partly because I was sleeping in the house on the site where a zealot had burned down his house so that his daughter and grandaughter would no longer be an embarrassment to him. Oh, and then there was Brian Bloomquist, who I would bet money was murdered simply because he owned a tract of land that Roberta Flagg wanted.
Thoughts of Roberta and her audacity kept my heavy eyes wide open for hours. The woman had the audacity to punch me because I dared to say something negative about her ancestor. He wasn’t a murderer, but he was certainly a jerk. I couldn’t take it any longer. Maybe it was my ego, but I could not let that woman think she had pulled the wool over my eyes. Maybe she had everybody else in this town fooled, but she didn’t fool me.
I got up at six, skipped breakfast, and borrowed Rudy’s truck. I drove around the country, around the lake, through town, and then I eventually stopped at the side of the lake without buildings and without people and just sat there surrounded by Mother Nature and tried to clear my head. The lake was gorgeous, the blue sky reflected on the surface, with the green trees lining the side. It almost looked like I was at one of those IMAX movies where everything was projected in a circle all around me.
Finally, I went to the historical society hoping to find Roberta. She wasn’t there. It was too early. I went to a gas station and looked in the white pages and found Roberta’s address. Then I asked the attendant where Watson Grove was located.
When I knocked on her door a few minutes lat
er, I was keenly aware of the little things, like the bikes that were thrown down in the yard, the sandbox. The dog doo I had just stepped in. It was a small ranch, probably three bedrooms. They couldn’t afford much. How could they? Every penny they had was being spent on lakefront property. Roberta answered the door wearing a dingy plaid house robe and big pink fluffy slippers. She looked shocked to see me. There was a sense of satisfaction hidden in that expression of shock. Like she was going to get one more chance to deck me or something.
“I want to talk to you,” I said.
“I’m not letting you in my house for love or money,” she said.
“I need to talk to you about Brian Bloomquist,” I said.
Roberta gave a nervous look over her shoulder. “I have nothing to say,” she said.
Her family was probably at home. She wasn’t going to talk to me where they could hear her, no matter what.
“Why don’t you come out here on the porch,” I said. “That way I can call you a murderer, and your kids won’t hear me.”
Roberta’s face went white. Then she laughed. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I think you do,” I said.
She shut the door and came out on the porch then. “Say what you have to say and then get off my property, out of Olin, and out of this state.”
“In a hurry to get rid of me, eh?”
She exhaled an angry breath and then said, “What do you want?”
“I just want to let you know that you don’t fool me. I know you killed Brian Bloomquist,” I said. “You thought if you killed him everybody would automatically assume it was Kimberly Canton. Then you’d be free to buy the property. What you didn’t think of … which either shows your haste or your stupidity—I’m going for the latter—is that Kimberly Canton has an airtight alibi.”
She said nothing.
“So, then you’re still free to buy the land—if the widow decides to sell—because nobody really suspects little ol’ Roberta. You’ve been very quiet about the subject.”
“What subject?”
“The fact that you’re in a race to get as much lakefront property as Kimberly Canton.”
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