See Also Murder

by Larry D. Sweazy

  Calla smiled, but let the expression fall away as quickly as it came on. “Why are you here, Marjorie? Kind of out of sync, you are, aye? I figured you’d be over to the Knudsens’, or looking after Hank, not gallivanting around town dressed like you were going to church on the first Sunday of the Easter season.”

  She was right. I had on my low-heeled black shoes that I’d ordered from the Montgomery Ward’s catalog, along with my second-best dress, a simple blue sleeveless dress that I’d sewn from a McCall’s pattern: princess seaming in the bodice and a three-gore slim skirt that fell just to the knees. My hair was up, sprayed in place with enough Aqua Net to hold a bird’s nest to a tree limb. Truth was, I didn’t want Raymond to see any farm in me at all—even though I knew that was impossible. I didn’t mix with the academics at the college any better than Hilo did.

  I didn’t know how much to tell her, but I needed her help—just like I would Raymond’s. “I need to do some research.”

  “For an index?” She sounded perplexed. “You’re working today?”

  I’d always been a horrible liar. One cover-up led to another, until you couldn’t remember what you’d said or where you’d started, so I did my best to just blurt out what was on my mind—but not this time. I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about the amulet, or that Hilo had asked me to help him, so I just stood there and stared silently at Calla.

  She took a deep drag off her cigarette and studied my face for an eternity of moons. “All right,” she finally said. “I figure you’ll tell me when the time’s right.”

  “I will. I just need to figure something out.” It was my turn for a puff. For some reason, the cool menthol of the cigarette suddenly tasted foul, like cough syrup on a snowy day. It smelled like formaldehyde to me, and I couldn’t help but think of embalming fluid being pumped into Lida Knudsen’s decaying veins.

  I reached over and stubbed the cigarette out on the brick wall. A shower of sparks fell to the ground and I watched them all disappear. Shooting stars at night, a life snuffed out. Or two lives. Everywhere I looked I saw and smelled death—even at the library; especially at the library. Shakespeare whispered from Hamlet underneath the whirl of the fan, “For in that sleep of death what dreams may come.” And Twain taunted me with his admonishment, “The fear of death follows from the fear of life.” Dead men always spoke to me on these grounds.

  Calla kept smoking, never taking her eyes off of me.

  “I need some information on Norse mythology and orthography. As much as you can find,” I said.

  The librarian exhaled a cloud of thin gray smoke and shook her head. “You’re a basket of surprises, Marjorie Trumaine, I have to tell you that. I’ve just never met anyone like you.” Calla put her cigarette out, secured her clutch under her arm, and added, “You know if you need anything, anything at all, all you have to do is call me. You know that, right? Not just an answer, but a shoulder?”

  “I know. Thanks, Calla, I really appreciate it. This is difficult. It’s good to know that you’re here. I always know that you’re here.”

  CHAPTER 6

  It didn’t take Calla long to collect a stack of books that I hoped would help me figure out what I was looking for. Most of the books were old, dusty, not touched in years, and from the non-Christian religion section—Norse mythology was 293 in the Dewey decimal system. The entire section totaled seven books. Calla always complained about lack of funding. If she had her way there’d be books stacked to the ceiling.

  There was a point in my life when I knew a good chunk of the Dewey decimal system by heart. I had decided as a girl to learn it, and commit as much of it to memory as I could, so it would save me time in the library. Most of our visits had been quick stop-offs on the way back home from shopping, doctor appointments, or other reasons to be in town. There were long stretches in the winter that were spent solely on the farm, and all-day library visits were rare, almost unheard of. There was too much work to do at home. Besides, that kind of memory exercise came easy to me back then.

  But lately, mostly since I had started indexing books, my long-term memory had changed. Reading to index a book was different than reading for pleasure or schoolwork. It was impossible not to retain some of the information that I read, but my eyes looked for keywords, and my mind searched for concepts, ideas, and opinions that might lead to a question that a reader might ask of the text, then look for an answer in the index.

  The desire to digest every word in every book I read for enlightenment had gone to the wayside once reading became a profession. The irony was not lost on me. It was almost like I had to erase one book from my mind, forget about it the best I could, before starting to index another one.

  When the opportunity to write more than one index at a time presented itself to me, the skill of compartmentalization became almost as important as my memory and writing abilities. It was managed chaos, especially when the subject matters were worlds apart, like they most often were. Imagine juggling organic chemistry and headhunters at the same time. I was glad I didn’t have to at the moment, especially now that Norse mythology had been thrown into the mix.

  My requests made Calla feel useful, and that in itself calmed me down and made me less worried about the fact that I didn’t know the Dewey number for the Norse mythology books. I wasn’t sure I ever did. It wasn’t a subject that had ever interested me.

  Calla brought me two more books, from the philology section—498, for Scandinavian languages—so I could look into the orthography questions I had. She brought a few other books on antique jewelry and amulets, then left me alone without saying a word. I knew she’d come running if I called out for her.

  I was glad that I wasn’t allergic to dust, or the mold that grew inside old books and gave them that wonderful ancient, brittle, smell.

  I had picked a small corner off of the fiction section to conduct my research. Everything I needed was there, and from my many visits to the library over the years I had surmised that it was the most isolated spot in the building.

  Calla had made sure that I had a small desk with a comfortable, padded, straight-backed chair for my continuing research trips. A brass library lamp with an oblong green shade, along with the overhead fluorescents, offered enough light to read by without straining my eyes.

  I’d brought along a notebook dedicated to the task Hilo had set out for me, and I settled into work. The smell of distant cigarettes lingered, then mixed with the odor from the old books, and I soon forgot about my brief sojourn outside with Calla. It had been extremely difficult not to include her, not to tell her the real reason for my quest of Norse knowledge.

  I spent the next three hours searching through the books, using the index first, of course, looking for something that resembled the amulet.

  It was difficult not to judge another indexer’s work when that’s what I did for a living, but I had little time to linger and critique a style different from my own—still, I saw usability issues right away: a string of ten or fifteen page locators that offered no information and forced me to look at each page under the heading. An argument for subheadings and sub-subheadings could have easily been made, since I needed more time to use the first index I dove into because of the lack of detail in its structure.

  Indexing work was most often not acknowledged in the front matter of the book, so offering a complaint was a matter of writing to the publisher, which of course would prove as useless as the string of non-specified locators. I was lucky; H.P. Howard and Sons always included my name as indexer in the front of each book that I worked on.

  The first time that I saw my name in the front of a book, it had brought tears to my eyes and validated my work on the USDA course—my existence beyond the daily chores of the farm. I had thought it might be a little bit of immortality at the time; my name, my work, might outlive me. My toil at something viable, something that would last, offered an avenue to esteem that I had never considered before. It was the child I could never bear, my small offering to make the w
orld a little better place. At the very least, I felt useful. It was possible that an index would outlive me, and that filled a hole in my heart in a small way. It was a surprise and a relief—a gift, though, that I could not give to Hank. It was only mine.

  I closed the first book, went on to the next, and found some interesting information, but nothing that gave any clues to the origin of the piece of jewelry Hilo had taken from Erik Knudsen’s hand.

  From there, I determined the three runes that I had noticed when I held the amulet for the first time represented the children of Loki, a Norse giant who was the personification of evil. A trickster with far more power than any coyote that I would ever encounter.

  The children were: the Fenris wolf, a giant wolf preordained to slay Odin; the Midgard serpent; and the goddess Hel, the ruler of the realm of the dead.

  The engraving in the center had to be Thor, but there was no depiction of Loki or Odin. I could only assume that the writing on the edge described the meaning of the amulet—what it was for or what it was used to ward off. But that was just an assumption on my part. I knew nothing of the lore and rituals of the Old World, of the country of my mother’s people. I didn’t even have her accent, and if there were any family traditions that had been brought over, besides the food—lefse and rakfisk for starters—they’d been tossed away, replaced by traditions considered purely American.

  Assimilation was as much a desire as a requirement in those days, especially during the war and after; the demand of patriotism extended all the way out to the desolate plains. Now, I needed to know some of my own heritage, and my knowledge of it came up short when I really needed it. It was frustrating.

  A chill ran through my body as I read about Loki and his children. It seemed the giant hated the gods of Asgard. Loki had eventually arranged the murder of Balder, the god of light, son of Odin and Frigg.

  So I had to wonder, had someone arranged to have Erik and Lida murdered? If so, why? And who would do such a thing? What did Balder have in common with the Knudsens? Or was there any connection at all?

  I made a list of my questions, too, not just the information that I had gathered. I printed the list instead of writing it in cursive. My printing was exact, almost as a good as a draftsman’s when I took the time, and almost immediately I started to see an index forming in front of my eyes. It was the subject, Erik and Lida Knudsen’s murder, that left me feeling hollow and cold. I had never made a list, something resembling an index, that was so personal, even though I was starting to become fascinated by the research I was engaged in.

  Balder, as it turned out, had been one of the most beautiful gods of Asgard, and his mother had sought desperately to protect him from harm by gathering oaths from all things in nature not to hurt him. But she’d neglected mistletoe. Loki had tricked the blind god, Hoder, Balder’s brother, into throwing a piece of mistletoe, and Balder was killed by it. Thor had punished Loki for the murder by binding him in a fishing net, but the evil quest had not stopped there.

  The prophecy of Ragnarök, the doom of the gods, told of a great battle after Loki freed himself, and with his children led the enemies of heaven into battle. After Ragnarök, and Loki’s demise, it was foretold that Balder would return to heaven.

  I made another list of the names and the relationships, then scanned quickly through the antique jewelry books. There was nothing there that compared to the amulet I carried. I’d come up short in that regard, just like I’d expected to.

  Secretly, I’d hoped to get all of the information that I needed so I could cancel my visit with Raymond, but that was not to be. I still needed to go to the university to see him.

  I slid the notebook into my purse and closed up all of the books.

  I wasn’t sure what all the lore and legends meant, or what any of the information had to do with Erik and Lida Knudsen. I wasn’t even sure if the amulet had belonged to Erik, or if it was placed in his hand by the killer as a message. I kept coming back to that thought; it left me in a quandary. Why would a killer leave a calling card, something for the police to use to track him down? It made no sense to me. But then again, I was unaccustomed to the ways of the criminal mind and murder as a topic to consider.

  My head swam with the myths of the Old World, and that confused me even more. In all the years that I had known the Knudsens, not once did they ever express a belief in the ways of their ancestors. Just the opposite. Erik had always his faith as a Christian man, a devout believer, who had attended church every Sunday.

  My eyes began to burn, and I looked at my watch. Time had slipped away, and if I didn’t leave right away I’d be late for my appointment with Raymond. He hated tardiness more than I did.

  My reflexes told me to stand up, tell Calla good-bye, and exit the library as quickly as I could, but another sense told me to stay seated.

  I felt a set of eyes staring at me, on the back of my neck, and I caught sight of the shadow of a man standing in wait as I arranged my things to leave.

  I took a deep breath and looked over my shoulder. Herbert Frakes was staring at me from an odd vantage point, stuffed in an alcove like he had been sent there as a punishment.

  I jumped with a start.

  When I made eye contact with him, his left shoulder twitched and he looked to the floor, just like he always did. But the glance downward didn’t last. Herbert stepped toward me, his arms to his side, his eyes—almost black in the shadows—focused straight on me.

  Out of instinct, I stood and grabbed up my purse. The look in Herbert’s eyes concerned me. My purse was the only weapon I had if I needed to defend myself. I had never felt threatened by the janitor’s presence, but I did now.

  “You startled me, Herbert,” I said, in a little louder voice than normal, in hopes that Calla was within hearing range.

  He stopped about four feet from me, lowered his head, and looked away. The twitch had stopped. “Sorry, Miss Marjorie, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “It’s okay.” I relaxed a little bit and thought for a second that I might have been overreacting—but I still held a tight grip on my purse. I was on edge. Had been ever since Hilo had come to give me the bad news and left me with the amulet.

  Herbert Frakes was a gentle soul shattered by the war. I felt a little ashamed of myself for thinking he might hurt me in the one place I was sure that we both felt safe.

  “She had a cousin like me, you know?” Herbert said.

  “Who had a cousin?”

  “The dead one.”

  I was uncomfortable all over again. His tone was odd. I looked past Herbert, hoping to catch a glimpse of Calla, but I saw nothing but an empty desk at the front of the library. “Lida Knudsen?” I asked.

  Herbert nodded his head yes.

  “I didn’t know that,” I said. Which was true. Lida had never had reason to mention some errant cousin. We’d never talked much about our distant families.

  “Was in my unit,” Herbert said. “Hurt the same day as me. D-Day. We was green as a bushel of spring apples.”

  I nodded again. “You think he had something to do with what you read in the paper?” It was an assumption on my part. Truth was, I didn’t know if Herbert could even read. I tried to think if I had ever seen him with a book, and I couldn’t remember a time when I had. I was tempted to show Herbert the amulet, but I restrained myself. Hilo’d told me not to.

  Herbert shrugged. “Don’t know. He moved to St. Paul after we came back. Never seen or heard from him since.” He never looked up from the floor. “Just thought you should know since you was looking for answers.” He turned and started to walk away.

  “Herbert?”

  He stopped. “Yes, Miss Marjorie?”

  “You should tell Hilo about him if you think it’s important.”

  “Sheriff knows. They was best friends when they were boys,” Herbert said, then looked up at me like he wanted to say something else but couldn’t find the words.

  Instead, he hurried off, leaving me standing there alone in
a tomb of books with a bit of information that I didn’t quite know how to organize.

  CHAPTER 7

  I left the library drained. I sat in the Studebaker and tried to gather my thoughts for a long minute; a minute that I didn’t have to spare.

  The sounds of Dickinson surrounded me, but the hustle and bustle of a city, even a small one, with a city bus stopping and going, car horns blaring, people walking by on the sidewalk engaged in conversations, could not drown out the pounding in my head. Black cars, white cars, old and new, big finned spaceship-inspired convertibles mixed in a blur, along with a mix of farm trucks on duty to serve up a chore. None of the vehicles mattered to me. In town, on a busy day in the grim daylight, I was invisible—not a lone human standing out in a field, feeling like I was the only person in the world with pain and more to do than I could handle.

  I felt a heave in my chest, and before I knew it I was crying. Crying deeply for the second time since Hilo gave me the news about Erik and Lida’s fate. My emotions were usually in check and held firm, but the murders seemed to be too much to bear. I hadn’t cried this much in years. Not even when Hank had had his accident. There were things to do and no time to worry about what couldn’t be done.

  The murder of my friends was just too much to consider. How could anyone kill such sweet, gentle people in such a vicious way? No one deserved to die like that. No one. I couldn’t conceive of such pure evil, of hate and rage so strong that it would lead someone to climb through an open bedroom window in the middle of the night and slash a sleeping person’s throat.

  I allowed myself another good cry. Maybe I would get it out of my system. Maybe it was more than the murders. I didn’t know for sure. I just knew there was a feeling in the pit of my stomach that wouldn’t go away but felt a little better every time I cried.

  Caring for Hank on a daily basis had taken its toll, too. So had managing the intense deadlines that came along with indexing books, and the constant demand to juggle my literary duties with those of the farm. I was constantly battling between the authors and publishers I was contracted to please and deliver for, and the bank that held the mortgage on the farm and the note on the combine, on Hank’s dream. At that moment, it was all just too much. I felt selfish. I didn’t know what I was going to do if I lost Peter and Jaeger’s help—a thought that had been at the very edge of acknowledgement. I had grown dependent on the help of the two Knudsen boys, but now they had their own worries, their own matters to be overwhelmed by. I sucked in a deep breath of air at the thought.