Nordic Nights (The Alix Thorssen Mysteries)

by Lise McClendon

  He nodded. “Yesterday.”

  “And you told them all this?” Another nod. “Did they say anything about you going to court on Monday and telling the judge what you’ve told me?” Nod. Right, of course. “Is there anything else? Did you hear or see anything else?”

  He shook his head. He was finished.

  “Where was Mistress Isa during all this?”

  “She was out. She have something to do.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Something? Do you know what?”

  “She don’t tell me.” His face was impassive, his tone the same. But still there seemed to be a softening in his expression when he talked about her.

  “Can you guess where she might have gone?”

  He shook his head again.

  “You work for Mistress Isa, don’t you?” He nodded. “How did you two meet? You seem so different.” Understatement Number 3,622.

  “She come to Miami. On vacation. I was living there. We meet, have …” He waved his graceful hand back and forth between a spot on his chest over his heart and its invisible opposite. As if saying their hearts were connected. “We have some things we know the same. Some ways to feel the stones, the shells, that we can both do. That brings us together.”

  “You tell fortunes too?”

  A slight smile crossed his full lips. “Reading the shells is not the same as fortunetelling. It is feeling the spirits, the winds, the sea, the sun and moon. These energies, and many secrets. Many ceremonies, drums.”

  “But there is some similarity, things the same?”

  “Yes, the runes as she tells them have many same meanings as the seashells the Palo Mayombe use. I am Yoruba, but I know the Palo Mayombe too.” He glanced at me to see if I knew what he was talking about. I didn’t.

  “Yoruba? Is that in the Caribbean?”

  He shook his head. “I am from Cuba, but my ancestors are from Africa. We are the Yoruba, we were slaves. We practice many rituals with shells, with coconut skins, for hundreds of years, in secret in Cuba.”

  He hesitated, as if he wanted to tell me more but had been silent for so long. “Go on,” I urged. “It’s fascinating.”

  “Some call it Santeria. The language we use, the Cubans call Lucumi. But it is really the language of the Yoruba from Nigeria. My people.” Peter took a drink of water as if he hadn’t had water in days, then set the glass back on the table. “Mistress Isa came to a Santero ceremony. That is where we meet. She likes to—” He paused, biting his lower lip. “She is interested in Santeria.”

  “How long have the two of you been working together?”

  “One and one-half year,” he said. “I must go now. She is waiting for me.”

  “Wait, Peter, one last question. Was anything missing from the room? Did they find what they were looking for?”

  His face dropped, very grave now. “They took them. They took the runes.”

  Chapter 9

  A thurs rune far thee, and three more I scratch:

  lechery, loathing, and lust;

  off I shall scratch them, as on I did scratch them,

  if of none there be need.

  The paper under my arm, I put my head down into the cold and pushed across the square toward the county jail. I wondered briefly how much the county attorney knew about the stolen runes. Had Peter told them they were missing? Surely Mistress Isa had mentioned it. That would be one thing she would miss, since that was her current livelihood. Had she read fortunes yesterday, without the set? Peter indicated that she had another set. But not another one like those stolen.

  I remembered admiring them at Cosmic Connie’s. They were ornate with inlaid silver and turquoise, well-burnished wood grown dark and soft-edged from the oils of many hands. The box itself was remarkable: a sort of treasure chest with brass hinges and latches, also inlaid in a delicate scroll design in silver at the corners. Dinged and dented, it was obviously ancient. Peter had run his long fingers over its edges lovingly. The chest, Peter said, was gone too.

  The light turned red at the corner of the town square. I peeked out of the collar of the down jacket to check for traffic and ran through the snow to the other side. My nose tingled, freezing. I had forgotten my hat. I reached the courthouse lobby, got directions to the jail, and gave my name and Hank’s to the guard. He disappeared through a door as I settled in to finish reading the paper and thaw out.

  FIRE MARS JACKSON PARADE (Jackson, Wyo.) A fire marred the festive but freezing Nordic Nights parade last night in Jackson, a Teton County sheriff’s deputy reported. Although a crime report has not been filed with the sheriff yet, the deputy said the incident is under investigation.

  Bystanders at the scene on a side street near the Jackson town square said a float was burned. According to Chamber of Commerce director Gloria Worster, the float was a model of a Viking ship entered by Montana tourist Henry Helgeson. Helgeson was recently named in a murder investigation in another police matter. The model boat, Worster said, measured twelve feet long and was complete with a sail. The boat suffered fire damage and the sail was completely destroyed, she said.

  Although the parade floats were not awarded prizes, Worster said the ship was one of the finest in the parade. “The details were exquisite,” she said. “It’s a crying shame.”

  The boat’s owner, Henry Helgeson of Billings, Montana, is currently jailed awaiting a preliminary hearing in the stabbing death of another tourist, Glasius Dokken. Dokken was visiting Jackson for the Nordic Nights festival and was a well-known Norwegian artist. The Star-Tribune has learned that the Norwegian consul from Chicago will be in Jackson today investigating the “unfortunate death of one of Norway’s most prominent citizens,” according to a consul spokesman.

  Chicago? The consul I talked to said he was from Billings. Apparently Glasius’s death was causing some clamor at home. I had to get a copy of USA Today or a big-city paper. What did this consul think he was going to do? Bully the cops? Well, that was a local pastime I was familiar with. I could enjoy this if it weren’t for my mother’s anguish over her husband in jail.

  The guard opened the door and poked his head out. “This way, please.” He even held the door.

  Hank did not look so good. The small interrogation room where they put us (after patting me down) had fluorescent lights that made him look even greener than normal. He had dark circles under his eyes and slumped in his chair. He barely looked up as I entered.

  “Your mother was just here,” he said in a mumble. He wore the awful orange jumpsuit favored by jailers everywhere. He laid his hands in front of him on the scratched Masonite table as if examining his manicure.

  “So she told you,” I said. “About the fire.”

  He nodded. “I heard last night. There was a commotion here. Some deputies came back from the parade and told everybody. They didn’t know it was my boat.”

  “I’m so sorry, Hank. It was beautiful, really.”

  He looked up, lips twitching as if he might cry. Five years in his garage, laboring over every authentic detail, up in smoke in five minutes. He glanced at the bandage on my hand. “Una told me what you did.” He held my glance for a moment, the most thanks he could muster.

  “It was nothing,” I said.

  He sighed deeply, hanging his head again. He was so still for a moment that I thought he had fallen asleep. I cleared my throat.

  “Hank? I need to talk about the night Glasius died. Okay?”

  He raised his head, looking up at the white sky out the tiny window near the ceiling.

  I continued: “Were you looking for something? Did you and Glasius find something in Isa’s room?”

  His head whipped back toward me, a frown on his eyebrows. “Who told you that?”

  “Her assistant, the big black guy.”

  “Who?” He shook his head. “I don’t know any assistants.”

  “Isa’s helper at the fortunetelling session? Wasn’t he there?”

  Hank shrugged. “Whoever he is, he’s lying.”

&nb
sp; “You weren’t looking for something in Isa’s room?” His lips were pinched together now. “We know you were there, Hank. There’s not much use denying it. I don’t see how—”

  “Stay out of it. You don’t know anything.” His voice was harsh and cut through me.

  “How can I stay out of it, Hank? I burned my hand last night trying to save your ship, you know. Somebody torched it, Hank. Somebody has it in for you, and that pisses me off. They’re hurting people, including me. It’s personal now.”

  Hank looked at me, fear in his eyes. The stubbornness was still there but softened by the reality of the mess he was in, something he obviously preferred not to face. He dropped his eyes and hands to his lap.

  I leaned forward, whispering now: “Listen to me, Hank. You’ve got to help yourself. I don’t think you stabbed Glasius. Mom doesn’t think you did. But the longer you keep your mouth shut about what you were really doing in that room, the greater the possibility that Una and I belong to an exclusive society with a membership of two.”

  He pushed his chair back, eyes still down. I leaned in more.

  “Roscoe Penn is even losing interest, Hank. A man who doesn’t try to save himself isn’t much fun, even for America’s Most Flamboyant. You’ve got to tell us why your fingerprints were all over that room. What were you doing there? What were you looking for, Hank?” I paused and gave him one last chance to tell me himself. The moment passed uneventfully. “Was it the set of runes?”

  His head jerked up, mouth dropped.

  “Peter, the black guy, told me. He’s probably told the cops too. He said that gorgeous set of runes in the chest is gone.”

  “You can’t tell anyone, Alix.” He jumped up from his chair, the orange jumpsuit tugging at his round middle and billowing around his feet. “You can’t, you mustn’t.”

  “It’s a little late for that, isn’t it? Peter’s told the police already,” I said.

  Hank paced back and forth, shaking his head. “No, no one has said anything about them. I don’t think he has. Not that Isa woman either. That confirms what Glasius said. That they were stolen in the first place, so we might as well steal them back.”

  I sat back. “So you were there to steal the runes.”

  Hank waved his hand dismissively. “Reclaim, steal, whatever. They belonged to the Norwegian people, not to some white gypsy.”

  “Where are they from?”

  “Glasius said he saw pictures of them in books, but they had been missing from his university in Oslo for years and years. Probably sold on the black market and made their way over to the U.S. somehow.” Hank was agitated now, hands clenched, feeling the same injustice that Glasius must have felt that night in preparation for reclaiming the runes. That had a nice ring to it: reclaiming the runes. Much better than breaking and entering, burglary, or grand theft.

  “What happened in the room?”

  Hank stopped, put his hands on the back of the gray, institutional metal chair. “We went up to talk to her. That woman. Nobody answered our knock, so we let ourselves in. Remember that time we stayed at the Wort Hotel, Una and me? Well, I remembered how easy it was to jimmy those locks. Sure enough, it only took a minute with my credit card.” He beamed, remembering, no doubt, the moment of victory over hardware. Hank was a big fan of television private eye shows, especially old ones like The Rockford Files. Now he was playing James Garner, only shorter, fatter, and balder. “We looked around, but we couldn’t find the runes. We didn’t find them.”

  I leaned into the table again, getting to the heart of it finally. “What happened to Glasius, Hank?”

  “I opened the door, like I said.” Hank frowned, rubbing his large forehead. “We looked around for a few minutes. It didn’t look like the runes were there. Anyway, I was nervous and wanted to leave, so I left Glasius there. I expected him to come out, but he never did.” Hank had a look of amazement on his face that in another time and place might have been called childlike wonder.

  “Where did you go?”

  “To the coffee shop. But then it closed at one o’clock, and they kicked me out. Glasius still hadn’t come down. I hung around in the lobby for a few minutes, but that made me nervous. So I went home. Back to your apartment. Then—”

  “Then?”

  He looked sheepish. “I didn’t go inside. I went back to look for Glasius. I didn’t feel right just leaving him there, him being in a foreign country and all. I thought he might get in some trouble.” I raised my eyebrows. You got that right, mister. “The door to the room was ajar, and I was positive I’d closed it. I pushed it open, just a little. And there he was. On the floor with that, that thing in his back.”

  “That was when the police came?” I asked. He nodded, hanging his head so low that all I could see was the top of his bald pate ringed by wisps of gray hair. My turn to rub my forehead and feel the bump on the bridge of my nose. “Shit.” Hank sat down again, resumed the slump. “You’ve got to tell Roscoe Penn what you told me.” He didn’t answer. I stood up and walked behind my chair. “Look, Hank, it’s not going to matter what happens to those runes if you’re in prison or get the death penalty. You can’t help Glasius now.”

  Hank looked up, fierce. “You’re wrong about that. Glasius is the only person I can help now.”

  I shook my head. “No, Hank. Help yourself.”

  I called Roscoe Penn at home from the courthouse lobby. His butler or somebody said he was skiing but took the message to call me pronto or sooner. Everybody else has an answering machine, Roscoe Penn has a butler. I hung up, zipped up, and schlepped up the street to the Second Sun. It was noon already. Time to give Artie a lunch break.

  My mother came through my office with a steaming bowl of soup for Artie as I opened the front door of the gallery, letting in a blast of freezing air. The weavings on the wall shivered in the cold breeze. I pulled off my pac boots and once again thanked the Canadians who had invented them. With their wool felt liners and impervious rubber bottoms, nothing felt better on the feet in winter. I picked them up by the fake fur collar, dumped them in the bathroom, and hung up my coat.

  Una huddled by the jewelry case as Artie leaned over the bowl and sipped hot liquid. I caught my mother’s eye, motioning her over to Paolo’s sales desk. She looked better today, as if she had gotten a little more rest.

  “I was just down at the jail,” I said in a low voice. Artie didn’t need to hear all the grisly details. “Hank said you were there too.”

  Una nodded. “He seems to be doing all right.” She frowned and crossed her arms, then with effort changed her expression to something more hopeful.

  “Stubborn old coot, huh?”

  The frown returned, this time directed at me. She looked out the frosty windows at the ice sculptures. Again the low, incessant tapping of the carvers provided the day’s backdrop.

  “Well, he finally told me what he was doing in the hotel room,” I said. Now I had her attention. “Did he tell you too?”

  “No, he didn’t tell me anything except not to worry.” She harrumphed at that notion. “What did he say?”

  “That he and Glasius broke into that room to look for a set of old runes that belonged to the university in Norway. They were going to repatriate them.”

  “Runes? You mean those fortunetelling ones?”

  “Those inlaid ones. Glasius thought they were very old and wanted them back in the homeland.”

  Una rolled her eyes, set her mouth, crossed her arms again. “For that Glasius got killed?”

  Was that it? Was he killed because he wanted the runes, or just because he broke into someone else’s hotel room? That wasn’t clear to me. But right now my hand was killing me. I followed my mother up the stairs, let her re-dress my hand with ointment and gauze, then gulped down three aspirin. I ate a peanut butter sandwich standing up at the sink after Una left to go to the garage and inspect the damage from last night. I told her to take a nap, she needed it. It was doubtful she’d take my advice on that. Napping was a sign of
weakness in Norwegians, something practiced only by babies under duress. The rest of us have too many important and never-ending practical tasks awaiting.

  Luca Segundo was staring at Glasius Dokken’s murals, her head cocked and forehead furrowed, when I clumped back downstairs. I had changed my clothes into something more artistic for an afternoon in the gallery, finding a bright royal blue sweater on the top shelf of my closet that had been overlooked all winter. It was old, a present from Paolo years ago, and had bagged-out elbows, but it felt comfortable and upbeat. It looked presentable with the neatly pressed khakis (courtesy of Una) and certainly better than the jeans and sweatshirt I had mopped and shoveled in this morning. I poked my head out of my office door to see if Artie needed help, and saw Luca.

  “Hey, gringa,” she said, smiling as she spied me. “I want to show you something.”

  Luca had on more clothes than an Eskimo: long wool coat (red), muffler, hat, mittens, leather boots, sweaters (at least two), vest, wool pants, probably long johns too. She had spent the entire month of November holed up with mail-order catalogs, getting ready for her first real winter. Costa Rica hadn’t prepared her for all this snow and cold.

  But she was adaptable; I admired the way she plunged in, trying to get the jump on winter. It never worked, in my experience; winter always bit you back somehow. But it never hurt to be prepared. My father used to sing that every time he packed up his old station wagon for a month on the road selling lingerie and then hammers: “Be prepared, be prepared, the motto of the Boy Scouts.” Then he’d throw a bottle of Jim Beam in the backseat and wink at me. My father was many things, but he was never a Boy Scout.

  She spread the photographs, two packets full, out on Paolo’s sales desk I sat down behind it and began picking up the pictures one by one. As I looked at the shots of Gloria Worster in her fluffy boots and a couple of the marching band, Luca peeled off a few layers of clothing.

  “Did you give these to that reporter?” I asked, curious about last night.

  “Conrad? Yes, I had two sets made. Did you know it doesn’t cost you very much more to do that?”