Nordic Nights (The Alix Thorssen Mysteries)

by Lise McClendon

  “Mr. Penn is expecting you,” she said, leaving the colorful padded chair to disappear into the back hallway. In a moment Roscoe Penn emerged. Una gasped slightly, coming out of her own haze to absorb the knee-high cowboy boots, pressed denims tucked into them, and fringed leather vest of our esteemed attorney.

  “Ladies, ladies, come back and have a seat.” He waved us through a carpeted hallway to a large corner office with a magnificent view of Snow King Mountain, the white runs and green fields of treetops crisscrossing its peak. We sank into buttery leather armchairs as Roscoe perched on a desk made from one huge slice of a tremendous tree that happened to grow not round but flat enough on one side to accommodate actual work. The side facing us, supported by trunk timbers, retained its thick, shaggy bark. If I had paid more attention to my biology teachers in high school, I could have identified it. Douglas fir, redwood, white pine? On the desk sat a lamp made from real arrows arranged in a tepee shape and topped with a painted hide shade. It cast a warm glow on the rings of the ancient tree, and on Roscoe Penn’s silver bracelets.

  “I need a little more information about last night, Mrs. Helgeson,” Roscoe began, folding his arms. I frowned at him, experiencing a distinct chill from his warmth of last night. “What did you and Mr. Helgeson do last night? Give me a rundown.”

  Una sat forward, her hands tight in her lap. She wore the black slacks again with a white blouse and black jacket, almost funereal. Maybe she was mourning for Glasius, I thought, her friend of one day.

  “We went to dinner at Luca’s, then back to the gallery for the reception,” she began.

  “Luca Segundo,” I said. “A friend of mine.” Roscoe nodded, then concentrated on my mother, his dark eyes focused and serious. Without his cowboy hat, his steely hair was long and well-moussed, combed back off his elegant forehead.

  “After the reception Hank and I wanted to take Glasius out for a drink. He seemed so wound up from the lectures and all. We were going to take him home after, since we couldn’t find Alix.”

  I cringed inwardly, dropping my eyes.

  “Where were you?” Roscoe asked. I looked up, surprised.

  “I went outside to look at the ice sculptures, then I took Bjarne Hansen home. The ski racer. Back to his motel, I mean.” What did he want to know my comings and goings for?

  Roscoe nodded, satisfied. “Continue.”

  “We went to a little bar Alix told us about, kind of off the beaten path, isn’t it, dear?” Mom smiled at me, indulgently.

  “The Six Point Over on Jefferson.” I seemed to be the just-the-Facts Ma’am.

  Una continued. “Yes, the Six Point Saloon with all those dead animals staring at you. What did you call it?”

  “Funky,” I said.

  Una pursed her lips. “We sat at a table. Hank and Glasius had a brandy, I had some hot cider. I had some wine at the reception, and that was quite enough liquor for one day for me.”

  Her tone suggested that everyone should stop with one glass of wine because she did, a tone I was intimately familiar with.

  “We were there about an hour, I guess, I’m not sure. Then we left, got into the pickup, and they dropped me off at the apartment. Then Hank took Glasius back to the Wort Hotel. I went to bed immediately, I was exhausted.”

  “And Mr. Helgeson?”

  Una frowned. “I think he came soon after.”

  “You think? But you didn’t see him come to bed?”

  She cocked her head. “I’m pretty sure I did.” Her voice was tiny now, unconvincing.

  “And you, Miss Thorssen—”

  “Call me Alix, Roscoe.”

  He recrossed his arms, amused by my informality. “All right, what time did you come home, Alix?”

  “Eleven, quarter after, something like that.” I had driven around a little, out to Wilson to whistle for Valkyrie and look at the stars and think about Bjarne’s kisses. So sue me, Mr. Cowboy Lawyer, if you’re going to get that out of me. I had a reputation as such a hardheaded pragmatist. I had heard it more than once from Gloria Worster, who headed up the Chamber of Commerce, as she exclaimed over my seeming coldness at the death of my partner. Little did she know. And little was I going to tell her. I let her think what she wanted, preferring to keep my emotions to myself, in true Norsky form. Erik would have been proud. I hoped I could reach him today, even with the Over-Eighty Tournament going down.

  “And was Mr. Helgeson at home when you arrived?” Roscoe asked.

  I shrugged, glancing at my mother. She was staring at her hands, strong but spotted with age. “I don’t know,” I said. “I didn’t check.”

  “Did you see him come in?”

  “No.”

  “What time did you go to bed, Mrs. Helgeson?”

  She looked at me quickly, then back at her hands. “About ten-thirty.”

  Roscoe Penn rose from the edge of his massive desk and began pacing in huge, cowboy-boot steps, back and forth in front of the large window facing a snow-covered garden. A birdbath topped with ten inches of snow peeked out of a drift. The day was sunny and frigid, the sky a hard, cloudless blue, perfect for more dog races set for the afternoon at Teton Village, and more ice carving too. He stopped pacing abruptly, stuck two fingers in each of his jean pockets, and jutted out his jaw at the window.

  “We’ll do our best this morning,” he said brusquely and looked at his watch. He pulled a leather-trimmed wool sports coat off a twiggy coat rack and slipped it on. “Time to roll.”

  I slipped my arm through my mother’s and back into my pocket, trying not to think about the sick feeling in my gut. Last night Roscoe Penn had been all bluster and confidence. Now he couldn’t have been less reassuring if he had worn black and brought along a ball and chain. A look at Una was all I needed to see that she was not feeling bountiful hope. Her lips were tight in a line, her eyes squinting against the wind, her chapped chin thrust out in defense. I turned away so she couldn’t see the worry in my eyes and tried to console myself by running through what I knew of Roscoe Penn’s illustrious career.

  He had successfully sued on behalf of an L.A. Lakers cheerleader with a legendary bustline who had been tossed into the air during a halftime routine. The male cheerleader who was designated as her receiver let her slip through his fingers to the hardwood floor. Her injuries weren’t completely disabling, but Roscoe went for deep pockets. He sued the manufacturer of the hand lotion the receiver had put on before the game, alleging a warning should have been applied to the bottle: “Use caution when tossing cheerleaders. This product may cause butter fingers.” Penn won $7 million in the lawsuit because the jury was distracted by the cheerleader’s breast tissue.

  Personal injury and product liability cases stuck in my mind, big decrees and much publicity. I could remember only one murder case Roscoe Penn had been involved in, a variation on the Twinkies defense. A runner had drunk gallons of red Kool-Aid before a marathon. During the race he became disoriented, then abusive toward several runners, hurling insults, paper cups, and the odd pebble as they passed him. He also spent quite a bit of time in the Porta Potties. When the race was over and the athletes were standing around in silver space blankets, the runner went to his car, took out a .44, and singled out one of the runners who’d passed him with a single bullet to the back. Roscoe Penn argued that the red dye in the Kool-Aid had caused temporary insanity. The jury didn’t buy it.

  That was certainly reassuring to recall. Una started rummaging through her purse as we got to the door of the Teton County Justice Court. She seemed frantic suddenly.

  “Did you forget your glasses?” I asked.

  She looked up at me, stricken. “The Metamucil. He needs it.”

  I pulled her shoulders toward me and gave her a big hug, smothering her face in my nylon jacket. I knew the feeling: Hank wouldn’t be getting out this morning.

  It wasn’t as if Roscoe Penn didn’t try. He turned into a different beast in the courtroom, brash, effusive, charming, even coy with the judge. Judge Juliette
Foss was blond and not quite forty, but she had plenty of experience with men like Roscoe Penn. She didn’t smile as he brandished his way through the hearing, sweeping his long arm across the front of her bench like a caress. She wasn’t impressed by the well-known Penn pyrotechnics, table pounding, hat waving, and foot stomping. When Hank Helgeson took the stand and couldn’t explain his fingerprints in the hotel room of Miss Isa Mardoll, the judge frowned.

  “It would be in your best interests, Mr. Helgeson, to explain to the court what you were doing in someone else’s hotel room,” Judge Foss said soberly. “Even if the information should appear embarrassing to you or your family.”

  Hank, looking pale and constipated, bit his lower lip, stared at the back of the brightly lit, modern courtroom, and refused to say. I grasped my mother’s forearm and leaned toward her. “Why won’t he tell her?” I whispered.

  Una didn’t answer, tears forming in her lower eyelids and spilling suddenly down her cheeks. She rummaged, found a hankie, and collected herself. I felt my throat closing; I couldn’t ever remember her crying. She must love him an awful lot. I put my arm around her small shoulders.

  “Mr. Penn, I suggest you have a small conference with your client and impress upon him the gravity of this charge,” Judge Foss said.

  Roscoe stepped up to the witness stand and spread his arms wide in front of Hank. We couldn’t hear what he was saying, or see Hank’s face. After a couple minutes, Roscoe stepped back and addressed the judge.

  “My client has nothing more to say, Your Honor. He feels it is his constitutional privilege to remain silent. He does not have the burden of proof, the state does, Your Honor.” Roscoe turned to the assistant district attorney, who sat smugly at his table, chin in his hand.

  “Is your client citing the Fifth Amendment, Mr. Penn?” the judge asked.

  “Not necessarily. Not at all, Your Honor. He—”

  “If he’s not citing the Fifth, and he refuses to answer, he is in contempt of court,” Judge Foss said coldly. “Do I need to explain that to you, Mr. Helgeson?”

  Hank was still, blinking his eyes once with no reply.

  Judge Foss threw down her pen and looked at the DA. “Is that the extent of your evidence, Mr. Robbins?”

  Robbins stood up suddenly. “Um, yes, Your Honor.”

  Hank’s fingerprints at the scene and his opportunity—that is, not having an alibi—were the D A’s evidence. It was more than weak. But that wasn’t what Judge Foss was getting at.

  “I’m going to give you more time, Mr. Robbins. We shouldn’t have rushed into this hearing this morning. If I’d been thinking straight last night when you called, Mr. Penn, I wouldn’t have agreed to it. But you, Mr. Helgeson,” said the judge, turning to Hank, still in the witness stand, “need some time to think about the ramifications of your actions, both last night and this morning. I hold you in contempt of court until you can bring yourself to answer the questions put before you. I will reconvene this hearing on Monday morning at ten am.” She slammed down her wooden hammer, an archaic leftover along with black robes. “This court is adjourned until that time.”

  Roscoe Penn stayed behind to knock some sense into Hank Helgeson. Mom didn’t want to talk to him just then and needed to get the Metamucil. We were silent on the walk back to the log cabin legal center of Penn Enright Hacker, Attorneys at Law. The Saab Sister had been covered with a thick, hard frost in just the three hours it had sat on the street. I pulled out a scraper and began hacking away at it. Una looked at the log building and twisted her gloved hands. Finally I had enough frost off to see out the front and back. I just hoped the darn car started.

  The seat was brittle with cold, slapping my thighs through the wool slacks I put on for my mother’s sake. I shivered, turned the key, said a prayer. It wasn’t necessary. Una straightened in her seat, her face set in the inscrutable way of Scandinavians, when you can’t tell if they’re about to burst into tears or laughter or venomous tirades. I squinted at her, checking the little tension lines around her mouth.

  “Let’s go, Alix. It’s cold enough to freeze Hades in here.”

  At the gallery we trudged upstairs to the apartment. Una went directly to the bedroom and reappeared moments later in her jeans and a cotton shirt she had worn painting the longboat. It sparkled with dabs of gold paint. As I stood in the living room, still trying to hang up my coat and take off my boots, she went to the sink in the kitchen and started pulling out cleaning supplies. I knew better than to argue with her.

  “I’ll make a pot of coffee downstairs,” I said, slipping on my clogs. “Come down in a bit and we can talk.”

  Una was busy attacking the sink by then, Comet and a sponge her weapons. She didn’t turn.

  I waited a minute, gathered up a clean cup and a tube of Chap Stick. “Mom? Did you hear me?”

  She sighed, now rinsing the sponge and going for the cupboards, inside and out. “I heard you. I just don’t think I want to talk right now.”

  “In a little while?”

  “No, not in a little while either.”

  “Why not?”

  She still wouldn’t turn toward me. “I am so angry right now, Alix. I am too angry to talk.”

  “We can talk about anger.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t.”

  “What happened last night, Mom? When did Hank come home?”

  “You heard what I told Mr. Penn.”

  “Was that what happened?”

  “I don’t lie, for your information.”

  I moved to the end of the kitchen counter, where I could see at least a side view of her face. Talking to her back was getting nowhere. She wouldn’t stop moving, wiping, setting aside dishes, wiping some more.

  “So you went over to the Six Point and then came back home? That’s it?”

  Exasperated, Una threw the sponge in the sink. Still she wouldn’t look at me, hanging her head between arms braced against the sink. “That’s it. The only problem is, I didn’t see him climb into bed. Is that a crime?”

  “No, Mom, it’s not a crime. It’s a problem, though. For Hank.”

  She looked at the ceiling, no doubt contemplating wiping it with Lysol. Her voice was low. “I know.”

  “Are you going to go see him?”

  “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On how I feel.”

  Not wanting more details in that department, I left her to the Comet and Lysol. When a mother gets like this, there are limits to how much a daughter can help. A mother doesn’t want to expose her frailties to her daughter, and a daughter really doesn’t want to see them. We want our parents to be strong and take-charge and to know exactly what they’re doing at all times. That was the way I thought about Una since Rollie died so many years ago. My father’s death had been devastating. She deserved happiness with a man again. Maybe we didn’t particularly like Hank. Maybe we thought Mom deserved somebody better. But she had made her choice, and at least earlier in the day I was sure she loved him.

  In the gallery all was dark. Yesterday’s sunshine had disappeared, leaving the blue-white scene of the town square out my front windows an eerie pale cloud punctuated by unformed icy blobs. It was almost noon, there were no customers, the gallery was shut, and the sun had gone into hiding. Oh, and my stepfather was rotting away in a cell because he couldn’t bring himself to speak up. That had never been my problem, at least when my ass was in a sling.

  Another day in paradise.

  Chapter 6

  Men will quake with terror

  Ere the seventy sea-oars

  Gain their well-earned respite

  From the labors of the ocean.

  Norwegian arms are driving

  This iron-studded dragon

  Down the storm-tossed river,

  Like an eagle with wings beating.

  —King Harald’s Saga

  I cradled the phone under my chin. “Any geezer hole-in-ones?”

  Erik laughed. It was a welcome so
und. “There’s been a few hole-in-thirty-ones. Does that count?”

  “Only in cribbage.”

  “How much coffee have you had, Alix?”

  “I lost count. Is my voice getting squeaky?”

  “No, but your synapses are charging. That’s always a sure sign.”

  “I’m going to need all the synapses I can charge.”

  “What happened? Hank get out of the clink?”

  “Hardly. Now he’s in on contempt of court. He won’t say why his fingerprints are all over the hotel room where the body was found.”

  “Has he told you?”

  “Hell, no. I haven’t even talked to him. Una won’t say either. The hotel room belonged to a woman. Someone not exactly his type, whatever that means.”

  “You’re saying you don’t think Hank might have had a little thing on the side?”

  “The Swedish meatball?”

  “You’re right. What happens now?”

  “Another hearing on Monday. There wasn’t really much evidence pointing to Hank. But he wouldn’t defend himself at all. And there aren’t any other suspects.”

  “Whose hotel room was it?”

  “A woman named Isa Mardoll. She reads the runes, like a fortuneteller.”

  Erik snorted. “You get more flakes up there, Alix.”

  “It must be the altitude.”

  “So Hank went to get his fortune read? Was this woman in the room?”

  “No, the cops showed up with Hank standing over Glasius.”

  “What—oh, Christ. I’ve got to go. An unarmed golf cart is heading for the lake. See ya, X.”

  I hung up the phone, set down my coffee cup, and opened up the gallery. The note I had left for Artie still sat on Paolo’s desk. The murals still hung in the back, brooding, morose, and prophetic. One canvas drew me in as I waited for the first dawdling customers to seek refuge from the weather.