Old World Murder (2010) (15 page)

“The fire is out,” Ethan said. “So, who was that?”

Chloe sighed. “That cop I was telling you about. He just stopped by.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Chloe winced, knowing what was coming. “Don’t freak out, OK? Last night somebody tried to break into my house—”

“
What
?”

“I scared the guy off, and then I called Roelke. The cop.” She didn’t go into the fine details of jurisdiction.

Ethan muttered something that was likely a curse. “I
hate
you being alone out in the middle of nowhere.”

“Don’t go Neanderthal on me, Hendricks.”

“I want you to get a dog. I mean it, Chloe. I’m not kidding around.”

“I’ll think about it.” Chloe slid sideways in the chair, hooking her knees over the arm. “I think this is all wrapped up with that missing Norwegian ale bowl. The sooner I find it, the sooner all this will stop.”

“Leave it to the police!”

“The police don’t have evidence of a crime. If I don’t pursue this, no one else will.”

He blew out an exasperated breath. “This is crazy, Chloe! If you’ve searched the historic site without finding the damned thing, what else can you do?”

“I asked my mom to do a little genealogical work about Mrs. Lundquist. And I’m going to the State Historical Society in Madison and poke around there.”

Ethan was silent.

“Don’t be mad at me,” Chloe said. “I truly couldn’t handle that. I miss you.”

“I wish I could come for a visit. But it’s peak season.”

“I know. I’m just feeling down tonight. On top of last night’s excitement, I had this ugly scene at work …” And she spent the next ten minutes telling Ethan about her exchange with Byron. “Thanks for listening,” she said finally. “You’re the best. I suppose you’re still gay?”

“Get that dog,” Ethan told her. “And don’t piss off that cop. What’s his name?”

Chloe poked at a tiny hole in the arm of her chair. “Roelke McKenna.”

“Well, stay on his good side. I’m glad you’ve got someone out there you can call on.”

But I don’t want to call on Roelke McKenna, Chloe thought. She’d said too much to him already.

____

Roelke felt wound too tight to go home. Instead, he drove back at the Eagle PD. Skeet was out on patrol, so the place was empty. Roelke sat down, picked up a pen. Paperwork would calm him down.

He found himself drawing tiny and precise geometric figures along the margins of the form. Finally he crushed the sheet into a ball and tossed it away. Then he got up, opened his locker, and picked up the photograph of Erin Litkowski.

He had met Erin about a month after he started patrolling solo in Milwaukee, the night her husband ignored his restraining order. Erin managed to call 911 as he was kicking in the door. Roelke responded. The husband had already fled. Roelke did what he’d been trained to do. Said the things he’d been trained to say. And then he left, adrenalin buzzing, flying off to the next call.

A week later, he came in from patrol and found Erin’s sister Pauline waiting for him at the station. “Erin is gone,” Pauline had said, her eyes glittering with unshed tears. “She’s not dead. Just terrified that her husband will kill her. Or me, if I helped her. She sent me a card, postmarked New York. She said the only option she had left was to disappear.”

“New York,” Roelke said slowly. “I’m not sure what we can do, other than sending—”

Pauline shook her head. “I’m not asking you to
do
anything. Erin asked me not to look for her, and I’m honoring that request.” She opened her purse. “But I wanted to give you this. My name and number are on the back. If you ever see her, or hear from her … please, get in touch with me.”

Roelke stared at the small, framed photograph that Pauline shoved into his hands. Oh, yes. Now he remembered. Erin had been one call in a very busy day, in a very busy week, in a very busy month. “I will,” he said.

“Thank you.” Pauline stood. “And thank you for trying to help Erin. She said you were kind.” She fished a tissue from her purse, blew her nose, and hurried away.

And Roelke had continued to sit still amidst the chaos of a busy district police station, staring at the image of Erin Litkowski. She had the kind of prettiness that came mostly from her smile. And some SOB had made her life so miserable that she had felt compelled to go into hiding.

Roelke had never again seen, or heard from, Erin or her sister. He didn’t know what to do with the photo, so he simply kept it. Was Erin Litkowski alive? Or had her husband traced her, and made good on his threats? He’d likely never know.

He put the photo back on the locker shelf and shut the door. He hadn’t done enough for Erin Litkowski. And he couldn’t do anything for her now. But he could look out for Libby and her kids, even if she was too damn stubborn and proud to like it.

And he could try to do the same for Chloe Ellefson. That Ethan guy, whoever he was, was doing a piss-poor job of it.

A big, noisy, motorcycle
zoomed past Chloe the next morning as she drove to Old World’s administration building. By the time Chloe parked, Ralph Petty was taking off his helmet.

“Good morning,” Chloe said.

“Morning.” The site director pulled a briefcase free from its storage compartment and jerked his head toward the building. “Come on in.”

Ralph had summoned her for a meeting. Once inside, Chloe helped herself to a cup of coffee from the percolator on the kitchen counter before following the site director into his office. Something to occupy her hands—not to mention a jolt of caffeine—seemed like a good idea.

“So, are you settling in?” Ralph asked, with a smile that was half cheerful, half solicitous, and totally artificial.

“I’m working on it.” Chloe matched his fake smile with one of her own.

“You know you can always come to me if you have questions or problems.”

“Thanks.” Chloe sipped the coffee, which was wretched. She and Ralph faced each other across a table. He was a compact man of middling height, early fifties, with a short beard he’d probably grown to compensate for a receding hairline. Chloe fervently hoped he wasn’t about to ask for a detailed account of her accomplishments to date.

“I wanted to see what progress you’ve made in terms of developing a plan for a permanent collections storage building,” Ralph said.

How much progress had he expected her to make in a week? “My assessment is coming along,” Chloe said vaguely. “I’m scheduled to meet with Leila in Madison on Tuesday. I’m sure we’ll discuss it.”

Ralph frowned. “I doubt that Leila will have time to be of much help. It’s important that we get a proposal drafted as soon as possible so I can proceed with fund-raising.”

“I’m all for that.” Since Chloe hadn’t even met Leila in person yet, she wasn’t going to offer any opinions on the division curator’s priorities.

Ralph picked up a thin file on his desk, and handed it to her. “I’ve drawn up some rough plans for you to look at.”

“I see.” Chloe opened the file and flipped through the half-dozen pages inside. Most contained pen sketches of a new facility, with scribbled notations: textile storage, farm implements, ephemera, conservation room. Why was the site’s administrator spending time on crude architectural drawings?

“Do you have a written overview of Old World’s collections?” she asked. “Something that provides estimates of what we have? I haven’t found that kind of breakdown.”

Ralph waved a hand. “We don’t need specifics for fund-raising.”

“But … shouldn’t we at least have estimates before we commit to anything? I’ll need to spend some time doing an inventory—”

“I did not ask you to do an inventory,” Ralph snapped. “I asked you to work on a storage facility plan. Was I not clear?”

“You were clear,” Chloe affirmed.

“Do not spend time on an inventory.”

That edict made no sense. No sense at all.

Ralph consulted a desk calendar. “I want to see a draft of your proposal in … two weeks. We’ll meet two weeks from today.”

“I’m not comfortable committing to that,” Chloe said. “The collection clearly numbers in the thousands of items, from giant threshing machines to silver thimbles. Nika and I are working on storage issues, but I’ve got daily needs from the interpreters too.”

“We’re a huge site with a small staff. Everyone has to work in overdrive.” Ralph frowned. “I hadn’t expected this negative attitude from you, Chloe.”

“I don’t have a negative attitude.” Chloe struggled to keep her tone neutral. “I’m trying to give you a realistic estimate of what I can accomplish, and when. Nika and I are already making good progress, by the way.” Nika was the only one making progress, actually, but Ralph didn’t need to know that. “We’ve moved all the textiles from the storage trailers to the basement of St. Peter’s Church—”

“What?” Ralph’s frown deepened. “I didn’t know anything about that.”

Shit. She
knew
better than to volunteer information to an administrator. “I ran the plan by Leila,” Chloe said breezily. “I couldn’t make progress in the trailers without creating some room. Nika’s doing a superb job, by the way. She’s a dynamo. I’m really grateful that you hired her.”

His phone rang. “Keep me posted,” he said curtly. Meeting over.

Chloe drove back to the restoration area, parked, and sat staring at the two horrid trailers. Her relationship with Ralph had obviously skidded onto proverbially thin ice. That took, what—a week? She remembered how hard she had tried, that first day, to get her career back on track.

And she might accomplish that yet, if she did what Ralph wanted her to do. She would need to focus solely on his collections storage building project. Doing a
good
job would mean long days, evenings, weekends. Crawling over the site to get at least a general sense of the collection. Contacting colleagues at other historic sites for comparative plans. Calling vendors for quotes on everything from shelving to climate control systems.

And it would mean pushing everything else aside.

Lovely. She could keep looking for the ale bowl, and risk losing her job; or she could keep her job, but give up on the ale bowl.

You need this job!
some inner voice whispered urgently in her brain. Chloe’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel. It’s what she wanted, right? A collections job, at a superb historic site? She could forget her promise to Mrs. Lundquist. Push aside the guilt. She didn’t have a choice. She really didn’t.

Chloe let her head rest on her steering wheel. Minutes ticked past.

Then she got out of her car, opened its trunk, tossed Ralph’s file on top of the boxed files already there, and slammed the trunk shut. The hell with Ralph.

She was scheduled to provide training to the German-area interpreters that afternoon. Based on yesterday’s debacle with Byron, she needed to plan an entirely new talk. Supporting the front-line interpreters was the most important thing she could do for Old World Wisconsin. The interpretive staff was the site’s public face. Without them, the historic site would begin a downward spiral fueled by unhappy visitors and declining revenues. The interpreters were not well paid; at the very least they should be well trained.

And when she was finished with the training plan, she would kick back and spend some time considering what the heck else she might do to find Mrs. Lundquist’s ale bowl.

____

Shortly before eleven that night, Roelke parked a patrol car down the street from Stanley Colontuono’s house. He’d not yet been able to identify the bookie who’d taken Ginger Herschorn’s nephew for seven hundred dollars at The Eagle’s Nest. Officer Voegler, one of the new part-timers, had gone to the bar in civvies, tried to strike up a conversation with the bartender, hinted that he was looking for action. Zilch. Maybe the bookie had left town. Maybe the barkeep had been wise to Voegler.

Roelke thought back to the night he’d seen Stanley burst into The Eagle’s Nest. Who had he been looking for? The bookie? Or someone who owed
him
money? If Stanley was the one taking bets, he might have moved the operation to his house, where it would be harder for the cops to nail him—

A flash of headlights in the mirror caught Roelke’s attention. He’d taken the clean flat-top that night because it had a more innocuous profile than a squad car with roof lights. He waited as the car drew even, went on by. A dark Mustang. The driver parked in front of Colontuono’s house. A streetlight illuminated a young man—dark hair, jeans—when he got out of the car. At least it wasn’t the Herschorn kid.

The radio squawked. There’d been an accident in the township. Multiple vehicles, injuries reported. As Roelke responded, the young man disappeared into Colontuono’s house.

____

Roelke didn’t get back to the station until almost one in the morning. He emerged from the can just in time to take a phone call. “Officer McKenna, Eagle Police Department.”

“McKenna? This is Marv Tenally, chief of security at Old World Wisconsin. We’ve had an odd thing happen at one of the Norwegian farms. I didn’t want to put it over the wire, and I don’t think I need to get the site director out of bed, but can you meet me at the Norwegian gate?”

Roelke reached the Norwegian gate in about eight minutes, and rolled his window down. “Hey, Marv. What’s up?”

Marv ran a hand over a white thatch of hair. He was a tall man, scarecrow-thin, a retired accountant from Waukesha. “Something seemed funny at the Kvaale farm. I already checked it out, but I’d like you to take a look.”

Roelke gestured. “Hop in.”

Marv locked the gate behind them, slid into the squad, and pointed the way to a log home with several outbuildings arrayed behind it. The high beams of Roelke’s car caught a raccoon in a moment of shocked stillness before it scuttled into the underbrush. “Stop in the drive,” Marv told him. “The interpreters are real particular about modern tire tracks in the farmyards.”

Roelke parked as instructed, and grabbed his flashlight before following Marv to the house.

“You know we’re in the process of replacing the old security system,” Marv said, mounting the front steps. “The old system here monitors noise. Everything looked good when I made rounds this evening—all the buildings locked up, microphones out. But about half an hour ago, I got a buzz from this place.” He unlocked the front door.

An open porch and an enclosed storeroom fronted the house. Two rooms comprised the back, a sitting room and a kitchen. Roelke played his light around the sitting room. The guides—no, Chloe called them interpreters—had left an incongruous series of large microphones planted on the floor, with heavy gray cords snaking back to the security box hidden from public view. The building’s ceiling was low, the doorways even lower. The combination of wires to trip over, lintels to bang into, and antiques to knock over made Roelke feel large and clumsy.

He planted his feet carefully as he turned to Marv. “So, you had an intruder?”

“Hard to say.” Marv rubbed his chin pensively. “A mouse’ll trigger the sensor, sometimes. But this … this didn’t feel right. First that mike tripped—” he pointed—“and then that one. By the time I’d grabbed my car keys …” he circled through the little house, leading Roelke into the storeroom, “
this
one buzzed.”

Roelke considered. The third mike to buzz was placed near a narrow flight of stairs in the storeroom.

“The door was locked when I got here,” Marv said. “The windows were secure. And the Norwegian gate was locked, too.”

Roelke made his way up the steep stairs. The attic was divided into two rooms—one front, one back. The front room was empty except for a row of lidded buckets probably used as mouse-proof storage, out of public view. The air smelled musty.

Roelke moved his flashlight beam carefully across the floor. A jumble of footprints marred the dust filming the floorboards, marking a clear trail from the stairs to the door of the back room.

“Are these your footprints?” Roelke called.

Marv trudged up the stairs. “Some of them are, from when I checked the place out earlier. Some could have come from an interpreter who came upstairs for some reason.”

Roelke squinted at the tracks again. There was no way to isolate any individual prints, but all of the tracks stopped at the door to the back room. He stopped there as well, splashing his light around the room. Empty.

Well, hunh. If an intruder with a flashlight was looking for something specific—say, Chloe’s missing antique bowl—he would have known from the doorway that it wasn’t there.

The two men clomped back downstairs. Roelke walked through the house again, considering the sequence of buzzing microphones. The side door from the porch to the storeroom provided the quickest access to the second story. But someone unfamiliar with the house would probably enter through the front door and circle through the lower story before finding the stairs. That matched the sequence Marv had heard.

“Can you think of any reason why an intruder would be interested in the second story?” he asked.

In the weird shadows cast by the flashlights, the security guard’s expression was hard. “No. And as far as I can tell, everything in the house is right where it’s supposed to be. But I read the incident report from the other day, when the new curator found the storage trailer open. I know Hank blew that off, but I didn’t like it.”