Old World Murder (2010) (19 page)

Three hours later, Roelke
found Chloe sitting in the lobby of the Dane County Sheriff’s office. She’d pulled her heels up and wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her cheek on her knees. Roelke felt something give way inside, something he’d have to think about later.

“Chloe,” he said. She lifted her head. “You’re all through here?”

She nodded.

“Then let’s go.” He took her hand and led her to his truck. The rain had given way to a muggy afternoon.

“Thank you for coming,” she said, as he pulled out of the parking lot.

“I’m glad you called.”

“My parents are in Iowa, and I didn’t know who else—”

“Would you shut up about calling me already? I said I’m glad you called.”

Chloe retreated into silence. Roelke inwardly cursed his clumsiness.

For the next few minutes he concentrated on getting out of Madison. When he was finally headed east he tried again. “Sorry. I’m not angry at you.”

“OK.” Chloe stared out the window, hugging her arms to her chest.

“Tell me again what happened.”

Chloe told him.

Roelke’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “OK, here’s why I’m angry at you,” he began.

“You just said you weren’t angry at me.”

“I lied. I
am
angry at you. What the hell were you thinking? Plunging into not one but two houses, alone, in suspicious circumstances? We’ve been through this before!”

“Stop yelling at me.”

“You deserve to be yelled at!” Roelke clenched the steering wheel so hard his hands hurt.

“OK, I get it.”

“Do you? Because I have no idea. I truly don’t. Bill Solberg was murdered, Chloe. Someone evidently bashed a nice old man in the head.”

“Stop it!” She scooted closer to the window.

“It could have been you. I could have just as easily gotten called to the morgue to identify your body. Do you hear me?”

“I think I’m going to throw up,” Chloe said in a small, tight voice.

Some of Roelke’s fury leaked away. “Seriously?”

“Yes.”

He pulled onto the shoulder. Chloe slid out and leaned against the cab, hands on knees, head lowered.
Dammit
, Roelke thought.

After five minutes Chloe straightened. Another five and she slowly climbed back into the cab. “OK,” she said. “It passed.”

“What have you eaten today?”

“Um … two cinnamon rolls and about four cups of coffee.”

Roelke eased back into traffic. “You need something to eat.”

“I need fresh clothes—”

“Fine. Your place to change, and then food.”

Chloe twisted her fingers together. “Someone was looking for the ale bowl.”

“Maybe it had nothing to do with the ale bowl.” Roelke sighed. “But for the sake of discussion … let’s say it did.”

“Mr. Solberg might have heard a noise from Mrs. Lundquist’s house. Or maybe he saw a light on over there, sometime late last night. Probably while that Carol Burnett show was on.”

“If so, Mr. Solberg went over to investigate, surprised the killer, and got—” Roelke caught himself just in time. “And, um, ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Chloe swiped at her eyes. “But why kill that sweet old man?”

Roelke shot her a sidelong glance. “Well, it may have been unintentional. It’s not as easy to kill someone by knocking them in the head as they made it look on
Starsky and Hutch
. Maybe Mr. Solberg fell and hit his head, and bled to death. Was there a lot of … never mind.” Asking about the amount of blood she’d seen—which could indicate how quickly Mr. Solberg had died—would be a bad thing to do. “We just don’t have enough information now to speculate.”

____

After Chloe had changed into fresh clothes, Roelke headed to his place. Ten minutes later he pulled into the tiny lot behind a second-hand clothing store in Palmyra, and parked beside a dumpster. “This is where you live?” Chloe asked dubiously.

“I rent the second story.” He led her up the exterior staircase, unlocked the door, and ushered her into the miniscule kitchen. “Watch your head.” Visitors often thumped their heads against the slanting pitch of the ceiling.

Chloe perched in one of the chairs, hugging herself as if chilled. Roelke looked in his refrigerator. What the hell did vegetarians eat? “Are eggs OK?”

“Yes.”

Cheese omelets, then. He put a cutting board, knife, and wedge of smoked Gouda in front of her. “Slice up some of that.”

She sliced, and he whisked, and soon butter was sizzling in a skillet. He made one large omelet, cut it in two, and slid the halves onto plates.

“Let’s eat up front,” he said. “More room.” Chloe followed him to the living room. He put her plate on an end table by the sofa, and dropped into his own favorite chair.

Chloe studied a model airplane hung from the ceiling with fishing line. “Did you make this?”

“Me and my dad did that, when I was about eight. It’s a Lockheed P-38 Lightning.”

She looked surprised. “You and your dad?”

“Yeah, why?”

Chloe dropped onto the sofa. “Sorry. It’s just that Libby said your dad …”

“Libby talks too damn much.”

They ate silently for a moment. Then Roelke heard himself admit, “My dad could be a real bastard. But … but there were some good times, too, especially when I was young. Before he got soured on life.”

“I’m glad.”

“I see too much crap. Too many men doing stuff they shouldn’t.” He looked at the model. “I try to remind myself that something made them that way.”

“Like something made somebody kill poor Mr. Solberg?” Chloe put her fork down as her eyes glazed over with tears.

“Nothing excuses that. But the killer probably felt that he had his reasons. It’s my job to figure out what those reasons were, so we can nail him.”

“It’s not really your job, though, is it?”

“Well, no,” Roelke conceded.

“I told the Dane County detective about the ale bowl.” Chloe used her fork to toy with a bit of egg. “He was … polite.”

“I’m going to take this to my chief on Monday,” Roelke told her. “I should be able to keep current with what the Dane County boys find.”

“Good.”

Roelke held her gaze. “And
you
are done with this. Got it? Done. This is a murder case now, and you – are – done.”

“There was something I wanted to tell you about Ralph Petty,” Chloe said quietly. Roelke tried to pay attention but as she talked of inventories and storage building plans, his mind kept straying to an unwanted fact. Because of her job, who she knew, what she worked with, Chloe would
not
be done until the killer was behind bars.

____

Chloe couldn’t finish her omelet. Still, by the time they walked back outside she felt collected enough to face what needed to be done. “I think I’ve got it together now,” she told Roelke. “Can you take me back to Daleyville to get my car?”

He frowned. “I don’t think you’re ready to drive.”

“I have to go to work tomorrow. No way I can take off after two weeks on the job.”

“I’ll drive you to work.”

“I need my own car,” Chloe said wearily. “I
want
my car.” She could not handle the idea of being trapped at her farmhouse, dependent on him—or anyone—for transportation.

He growled a bit more before driving her to Daleyville. Chloe slid into the Pinto quickly, keeping her eyes averted from the yellow police tape flagging both Bill Solberg’s and Berget Lundquist’s houses. The police were gone, though, with their cameras and notepads and questions. The tape drooped in the humid air as if ashamed of its role in the whole sad affair.

Roelke and Chloe caravanned back to the farmhouse, with her in the lead. By the time they pulled into her driveway, fireflies were blinking up from the hay field across the street. She and Roelke emerged from their vehicles and stood staring at each other, suddenly not knowing what to say.

“Thank you,” Chloe managed finally. “For everything.”

“Are you going to be OK here tonight? I could take you to Libby’s.”

Chloe shook her head. “I can’t hide at Libby’s. I’ll be OK.”

“You should get a dog.”

“Oh, Lord. Not you, too. I don’t want a dog!”

“Why not?”

“It’s not a minor thing! When you adopt an animal, it’s a commitment.”

“And why are you afraid of making that commitment?”

Chloe felt ready to drop with exhaustion. “Look,” she said, “I simply can’t have this conversation right now.”

“I’m concerned for your safety.”

“I know.” She watched him struggle to accept her message: topic closed, day at an end.

Finally he satisfied himself with an order: “Call me tomorrow.”

“All right,” Chloe said. “I will.”

Alone in the farmhouse, the silence seemed mocking. She paced. She watched the fireflies twinkling. She paced some more.

And she found herself in the bathroom. For a moment she stared at her reflection in the mirror. Her hand opened the medicine cabinet. The prescription bottle still sat in the middle of the shelf like a piece of art, carefully placed. She reached for it, thumbed off the lid, stared inside. The bottle was almost full.

The prescribed dose was four of the tiny tablets. Chloe slowly shook them into one palm. One … two … three … four.

And then the rest of the contents cascaded into her hand. Dozens of innocuous-looking white pills.

Abruptly she clenched her fingers around them.
Shit!

She moved her fist over the toilet bowl, sucked in a deep breath. But she couldn’t do that, either.

Finally she let the pills dribble back into the orange plastic container, capped it, and stashed it back in the medicine cabinet.

____

“What’s wrong?” Ethan asked.

“Nothing.” Chloe simply wasn’t capable of talking about Mr. Solberg right now.

“You’re lying.”

“I’m not lying,” she lied. “Really. I’m just feeling down and wanted to hear your voice.”

“Why are you feeling down?”

Chloe wound the phone cord around her index finger. She had to give him something. “I was thinking about my baby.”

Silence stretched across the country as they both digested that unexpected statement.

“I was wondering,” Chloe said, “if maybe I did something that caused the miscarriage.” She stared at the beige curls of plastic looped around her finger.

“What did the doctor say at the time?”

“He said, ‘These things happen.’ If there was anything more than that, my
Suisse-Deutsch
was insufficient.”

“I don’t know anything about that kind of stuff,” Ethan said slowly. “But it sounds like something just … just went wrong.”

“Yeah,” Chloe said. “Well, enough of that. Tell me what you’ve been up to.”

Ethan talked and Chloe listened, clinging to the sound of his voice. When they finally said good-night she felt ready to try to sleep.

But her dreams were full of accusing eyes—the very old, and the very young.

“Next item.” Ralph Petty
glanced down at a sheet of notes in front of him. “Chloe.”

Chloe tried to look alert. The Monday morning permanent-staff meeting at Old World Wisconsin was not for the faint of heart.

“What progress have you made regarding the new collections storage facility?”

OK, this one she could punt. “I’m meeting with Leila tomorrow in Madison,” she reminded him.

“Very well. Next item. Stanley.” Ralph zeroed in on the maintenance chief. “The restaurant trash cans weren’t emptied mid-day on Sunday.”

“I’ll check on that,” Stanley said vaguely. “I wasn’t on.”

“Who was on?”

“Well, let’s see … I guess it was Rupert. Rupert Engel. One of the summer hires.”

Chloe felt sympathy for Rupert, who was no doubt in line for another chewing-out. But it was impossible to care about overflowing trash cans. Not with what she’d seen. Mrs. Lundquist—dead. Mr. Solberg—dead. And now, Chloe had no way of getting back into Mrs. Lundquist’s house. No way to check the backs of her photographs for names. No way to search for a letter from a long-lost relative, or a scholar, or anyone else who might have prompted recent events.

“Next item,” Ralph said briskly. “Byron.”

Byron stopped doodling and looked up warily. “Yes?”

“I’ve found a source of shoes for the interpreters.” Ralph slid a catalog across the table. Chloe, sitting next to Byron, saw a red circle inked around an advertisement for “ladies’ costume boots.” They were white, with high heels and pointed toes.

Byron stared at the picture. “I’m not sure,” he said finally, “that these are practical for our site. Being white. And the high heels—well, a lot of our interpreters are middle-aged ladies.”

Ralph’s eyes bore into the younger man. “At the very least, order some for the lead interpreters.”

Byron shifted uneasily. “The leads walk miles every day. And the costume budget is already strained.”

“Four leads, four pairs of boots,” Ralph snapped. “Am I being clear?”

The room was quiet. Stanley picked his fingernails with a tiny screwdriver. The historic farmer had become fascinated with his pen. Research curator Margueritte Donovan was staring out the window at passing cars, and the restaurant manager was surreptitiously making tic marks on an order form on his lap. The visitor center manager had claimed that five hundred school children in the gift shop precluded her attendance, and was conspicuously absent.

“I appreciate your suggestion,” Byron began, “but I’m a little concerned—”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” Chloe slammed one palm on the table.

Silence mantled the room as everyone went very still—fingernails, traffic, pens, and order forms forgotten.

Chloe looked at Ralph. “Very few interpreters could wear these boots all day. The style is all wrong for immigrant farm women, anyway. And—” she flipped the catalog over to double-check the source—“it is
extremely
unlikely that boots offered by a company that caters to theatrical productions would stand up to the wear and tear of our gravel roads.” She sat back in her chair, smiling demurely as satisfaction briskly swept away the gray fog in her mind. So there, Ralph Petty, she thought. You have absolutely no power over me.

A phone ringing from the anteroom cut the stunned silence. The receptionist’s voice drifted into Ralph’s office: “Old World Wisconsin. Yes, ma’am, we’re open from ten to five on weekends.”

Ralph’s nostrils flared. Ignoring Chloe, he pinned Byron with another glare. “I expect you to consider these boots, Mr. Cooke.”

“I will,” Byron said quickly.

When the meeting adjourned, Chloe left the room at the back of the pack. No one lingered to chat in the kitchen. They all think I’m nuts, Chloe thought. They were probably right. She hardly recognized herself anymore. Old Chloe would never have told the truth to an administrator. Old Chloe had taken a lot of crap, all in the guise of getting good grades, keeping good jobs, making sure she had health insurance and a savings account and a circle of friends.

Well, she was different now. And maybe that was OK. Once she’d hit the bottom of her proverbial well, and wallowed about in filthy black muck for a while, perceptions changed. Old priorities didn’t matter. Telling off Petty? It hadn’t felt scary at all. New Chloe wasn’t inclined to waste any energy putting up with crap. She didn’t know how long this new sense of abandon would last. But it was kinda fun.

By the time Chloe reached the small parking lot, most of her colleagues were already spewing gravel as they roared away. Byron stood by his car. “You got time for lunch?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“Get in. I’ll drive.”

Fifteen minutes later a waitress thumped plastic tumblers of water in front of them at Sasso’s. “You know what you want?” she asked.

“I want a grilled cheese sandwich,” Chloe said. “On wheat, not white. And do you have any real cheese?”

“Real cheese?” The waitress looked confused.

“Mozzarella. Provolone. Anything that doesn’t come wrapped in plastic with the words ‘cheese food’ on the label.”

“We’ve got Swiss for the Swiss-burgers.”

Swiss. Of course. “That’ll do nicely.” Chloe said. While Byron vacillated between a baconburger and a baconburger with cheese, she wondered what Markus was doing, right that moment. Did he ever think of her at all? How would he feel if he knew that she had stumbled over a bloody corpse the day before?

When their order was complete, Byron leaned back in his chair and eyed Chloe. “So. What the hell happened back there?”

“You mean with Petty?” It suddenly occurred to Chloe that she may have antagonized more than the site director. “Oh, please. Don’t tell me you’re pissed again. Look, I realize I probably shouldn’t have jumped into your business like that, but—”

“No, it’s OK,” Byron said. “But—why did you do it?”

“Because Ralph Petty is an oxen’s ass. Those boots were ridiculous. I didn’t want the interpreters to pay the price.”

“They would have gone ballistic,” Byron agreed gloomily. He pulled off his little wire-rimmed glasses, fished a tissue from his pocket, and wiped them off. “We don’t provide shoes. It’s just too expensive. But if we could, it wouldn’t be those fakey white Victorian things.”

“Well, I’m not sure that me speaking up did any good.”

“Are you kidding?” Byron blinked at her, put his glasses back on, and blinked again. “I expected Ralph to grab the phone and place the order then and there, sizes be damned. Instead I got left with nothing more than a command to
consider
the stupid things. Major victory.”

The waitress returned with their plates. Chloe’s sandwich looked perfect: toasted a golden brown and pulled from the grill just as the cheese began to drip down the sides of the bread. They ate in silence for a few moments.

“So,” Chloe said finally, licking her fingers, “what do they teach in the Administrative track at grad school these days, anyway? How To Be An Autocratic Jerk, 101?”

“Don’t ask me. I have no hankering to climb that ladder.”

Which said good things about Byron, Chloe decided. It couldn’t be easy for this twenty-something guy to supervise a huge staff comprised largely of older women. But he took his responsibilities to heart, and she liked that. “Me either. But seriously, what’s Petty’s problem?”

“I have no idea.”

“He’s always been that way?”

“Pretty much.”

Chloe took another bite, chewing slowly, trying to think of another approach. “He doesn’t want me to inventory the site’s collections. He actually ordered me not to. Does that make sense to you?”

“He’s from out east,” Byron offered. His thin nose wrinkled daintily, as if he’d gotten a whiff of rotten pork. “New York City. And his last job was in Las Vegas, running some historic house.”

Ralph Petty might have been God’s gift to the museum world, Chloe thought, but with a resume like that, he had two strikes against him in Wisconsin, Harley motorcycle or no. “They have historic houses in Las Vegas?” she asked.

“I don’t know
what
they have in Las Vegas.” Byron dipped a French fry in ketchup. “Maybe they interpret the history of gambling.”

“Weird stuff,” Chloe affirmed vaguely. Where had she heard something about gambling lately? From Roelke. Hadn’t he mentioned some gambling problem to Libby, that day of the cookout? But … surely it was ridiculous to think there might be a connection between a director from Las Vegas and a local gambling problem. Wasn’t it?

She decided to change course. “Listen, I’ve been wanting to ask you something. Are there any interpreters left on staff who were working in the Norwegian area in the seventies?”

“Sure. Let me look at the staff list and get back to you.”

“I’d appreciate it.” Chloe took a sip of her water before moving on to the last item on her Byron list. “Do you have keys to the trailers?”

“The artifact trailers?” Byron looked startled. “Why would I?”

“In case you wanted something for one of the site buildings?”

He shook his head. But he suddenly seemed fascinated with his French fries.

“I wondered,” Chloe said, “because someone went in there without my permission last week. And you said something about Norwegian artifacts in the pink trailer that made me think you’d been in there yourself not too long ago.”

Byron flushed. “Well … yes,” he admitted. “I did go in there, the week before you started. I got Stan to let me in.”

“What were you looking for?”

“Reproductions. I need cookware, and garden tools, and—well, you’ve seen the requests, so you know. It occurred to me there might be something stashed away in there.”

Chloe frowned. “Why didn’t you just wait until I got here?”

“We’re
desperate
for repro stuff on site. I didn’t see any harm in spiriting away anything I could find before you were the wiser. I figured it could take weeks—months—for you to find time to deal with something like that.”

“Did you find anything? Take anything?”

“No. I just took a quick look, and I didn’t see anything that wasn’t accessioned.”

Was he telling the truth? Chloe didn’t know. But she had confirmed that both Nika and Byron had been in the trailers prior to her arrival. Either could have ripped the accession form page from the ledger.

“I know you need reproduction items,” Chloe said finally. “And I’ll gladly work with you on that. But you’re right about the demands on my time, especially since Ralph wants me to focus exclusively on designing the new storage facility.”

Byron leaned back in his chair and regarded her, his eyes sober. “You’ll pay for it. With Ralph, I mean. Taking him on in the staff meeting. Maybe you should … you know. Apologize.”

I’ll lay down in traffic first, Chloe thought. “What’s he going to do, fire me?”

“Well … yeah! New hires are on probation for six months. You’ve got no protection.”

Chloe shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Don’t you care?”

“Nope.” She didn’t. Her first-day dream of finding normal was long gone—splintered in a car wreck, bashed in the head.

Byron shook his head. But when the waitress returned with the check, he snatched it from her hand. “Give it to me,” he said. “I’m buying.”

____

“Well, I’d consider it a courtesy,” Roelke told the Dane County detective assigned to Mr. Solberg’s murder. “I know Ms. Ellefson’s problems are likely unrelated, but you never know … yes, you can reach me here. Thanks.” He dictated the Eagle Police Department number before hanging up.

“What was that about?” Chief Naborski asked from behind him.

Roelke had waited until Marie was on break before making the call, and he’d wanted to get as much information as possible before talking with the chief. So much for that plan. He swiveled to face his boss. “It’s a long story.”

Chief Naborski jerked his head. “Come into my office.”

Fifteen minutes later, the older man knew everything that Roelke did. He had listened in silence, his chair tipped back toward the wall. Now he let the chair rest on four legs and put both palms on his desk. “So. You’re indirectly connected to a murder in Dane County because a friend of yours found the body.”