Old World Murder (2010) (26 page)

“No, really, I’m OK,”
Chloe told Ethan. She was sitting in her old bedroom in her parents’ house staring at a hideous purple macramé creation that she’d made in seventh grade. “I’m just going to hide out at my parents’ place for another day or so.” It was Saturday morning. She wasn’t ready to go back to the farmhouse. Wasn’t ready to even think about facing anyone at the site.

Ethan muttered something inaudible.

“I’ve had lots of time to sit and think, though. And I do have some good news. I think I’m finally starting to get over Markus.”

“Really?”

“I still miss Switzerland. But I think I miss Switzerland a lot more than I miss Markus.”

“An important distinction,” Ethan agreed.

She sat up straight as a red pickup truck pulled up to the curb below. “I’m sorry, but I gotta go,” Chloe said. “Thanks again for always being there. You’re my best friend.”

“Always, Chloe,” Ethan said. “Always.”

Ten minutes later she and Roelke were seated at the round wrought-iron table on the back patio. Chloe’s mom had left them glasses of iced tea that neither seemed to want. “So,” Chloe said finally. “I didn’t expect to see—”

“Joel Carlisle is dead,” Roelke said. “He overdosed. At his parents’ house. They found him this morning.”

It took her a moment to take that in. Truly take it in. She swiped at sudden tears. “He was so young. He had so much—”

“He might have killed you! Or me!”

“He’s dead, Roelke. Isn’t that enough for you?”

“No. It’s not.”

Chloe put her elbows on the table and rested her forehead on her fingertips. “Was he telling the truth about Nika? Was she involved?”

“I questioned Carlisle on Thursday night,” Roelke said. “Nothing suggests that she had any idea what Joel was doing.”

Chloe was relieved to hear it. “I’ve been thinking about what Joel was trying to tell me. About Emil—Mrs. Lundquist’s brother. I couldn’t figure out how Joel knew about Emil. Then I remembered that Joel is a genealogist.”

“That’s it exactly. Carlisle discovered that Nika had a great aunt she didn’t know about. Berget Lundquist. He got all excited, and wrote to her. And he mentioned Nika’s job at Old World in his letter.”

“And?”

“She wrote back and said that as far as she was concerned, Emil died when he got married.”

“Because he married a black woman.”

“Right. Evidently Mrs. Lundquist called the state historical society and learned that the ale bowl had been transferred to Old World. She was afraid that Nika would somehow get her hands on it when she started working there. She told Carlisle that she wouldn’t let that happen.”

Fresh tears welled in Chloe’s eyes. “Everything is so
sad
.”

“Berget Lundquist was a nasty bigot,” Roelke said brusquely. “And Joel Carlisle was a weak bully who took the coward’s way out.”

“People who do what he did aren’t necessarily cowards,” Chloe said. She dug in her pocket for a tissue, winced in pain, and redistributed her weight to ease the pressure on the stitches in her thigh.

“Did you ever …” Roelke began, and then stopped. He stared at three girls jumping rope in the next yard. Faint snatches of their jumping chant drifted over the fence.

“Did I ever try?” Chloe asked shortly. “No. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t think about it, during the worst time.”

“What … what happened?” His knee was working like a piston. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

Chloe sighed. She truly didn’t know, not really. Despite everything that had happened with Markus and the miscarriage, she’d arrived in North Dakota with at least some of her professional passion intact. The small historic site there should have been manageable. But somewhere during that dull, gray winter, she’d realized that she simply didn’t care anymore. Not about her staff’s needs, not about the visitors’ experiences. Not about anything.

Chloe took a sip of tea. She didn’t have any idea why Roelke had become a cop, but she had a feeling that words like “passion” and “joy” wouldn’t enter into the equation. So how could she explain what happened to her?

Finally she said, “It was just a thing with a guy.”

“That guy on the phone?”

“… Who? Oh, Ethan. No, he’s an old college friend. This was someone I knew in Switzerland.” Chloe shifted her weight again. “Look, Roelke, people don’t choose to be depressed. Maybe Joel
did
make a cowardly decision. Or maybe he was clinically depressed and beyond help. Or maybe … maybe he ended his life so Nika and his parents wouldn’t be dragged through the public ordeal of a trial. If so, I’d say that what he did took a certain amount of courage.”

Roelke ran a hand over his hair. “It’s something I simply don’t understand.”

“I hope you never do.”

For a while neither one spoke. “He saved my ass,” Roelke said finally. “I did a lot of things I shouldn’t have done last Wednesday.”

Chloe stared at him with dawning dismay. “Did you get in trouble because of me?”

“Not much.”

I am so stupid, Chloe thought.

“The chief and I had a conversation. We’re square. I lied to Waukesha County deputies, though. Twice. That would have come out in the whole trial process. But now … it’ll likely all disappear. Because there will be no trial.” Roelke scrubbed his face with his palms. “I wanted to pound the crap out of Carlisle there at the farm. Instead, I did my job. I believed he’d have to answer for his crimes in court. Now I feel cheated. And angry.”

“Well … I’m angry at him too. And I’m angry at Mrs. Lundquist. I thought she was a sweet old lady. I screwed up my job for her sake! And instead—she was a horrible racist.” Chloe looked away, thinking, And what about me? She’d wondered if a current employee at Old World might somehow be descended from Berget. But she’d never considered Nika. It wasn’t the same thing. Not at all. But still.

The back door opened and her mother emerged with a tray. “I’ve got
fattigman
and almond cookies,” she said, as she deposited plates and forks and napkins.

“Thank you, Mrs. Ellefson,” Roelke said.

“Kallerud,” Chloe’s mother said pleasantly. “I use my birth name. But please, just call me Marit.” She beamed at him before heading back to the house.

Roelke watched her go. “I should have seen that coming.”

“Don’t worry about it. It happens all the time.” Chloe began pleating a napkin. “Was Joel really the one behind everything?”

Roelke sighed. “Berget Lundquist mentioned the family heirloom in her letter to Carlisle. Before you started your job, he went out on site to help Nika. He was with her when she took a look around the artifact trailers. She got called away for something, and left him there. Presented with that opportunity, he decided to look for the bowl’s accession record. He ripped it out of the ledger before Nika got back. He looked in the Norwegian houses without finding it. Later he got Rupert Engel to ‘borrow’ Stanley’s key so he could take a closer look in the trailers—”

“I was nice to Rupert! And I thought he was being nice to me! He even helped me with my car.”

“Rupert and Joel Carlisle were bar buddies. Rupert mentioned your car problems to Joel that evening, but he swears he didn’t know that Joel planned to break into your house.” Roelke gave her a sideways look. “Rupert is Stanley Colontuono’s nephew.”

“You’re kidding!”

“Nope. The kid has a long rap sheet already—”

“With Stanley egging him on, no doubt.”

“It doesn’t look that way. Rupert’s dad is out of the picture. His mother wasn’t able to control him. Last spring Stanley brought Rupert to live with him. He gave him the job at Old World—”

“That’s a nice little bit of nepotism.”

“Yeah. Of course Stan didn’t advertise the fact that Rupert was his nephew. The address on his job application lists the mother’s Waukesha address. Rupert didn’t show up for work yesterday. A county deputy went to the Waukesha apartment, but no luck. Fortunately I was able to pick him up.”

Chloe eyed him. “How?”

“I remembered his car. I’d seen him going into Stanley’s place. I’d been watching the house because I thought Stan might be the bookie we’ve been trying to identify.”

“And is he?”

“No. The extra traffic at the house was just friends of Rupert’s coming and going. One of whom was Carlisle. But I think Stanley really is trying to ride the kid straight, Chloe.”

She shrugged.

“The court date you saw noted on Stanley’s calendar was for Rupert. Stanley is planning to attend. He told me all the things he’s been doing to keep Rupert out of trouble.”

“Good for Stanley.”

“When he found out that Rupert was gambling, Stan went ballistic. That night I saw him barge into The Eagle’s Nest, he was looking for Rupert. And that takes us back to Carlisle. He was a gambler.”

“A
gambler
?”

“It started years ago, when Carlisle’s parents took him on some cruise. He got compulsive. It’s like that for some people.”

Chloe thought about that. She didn’t understand gambling’s appeal, but she supposed she shouldn’t condemn Joel because she didn’t understand his addiction.

“Anyway,” Roelke was saying, “after he and Nika moved to Eagle, he got in way over his head. He was in debt big time, to the wrong people. He couldn’t sell his vehicle or use his tuition money without Nika and his parents finding out. He got scared when Nika’s tires got slashed. He figured that was a message to him. These things can get ugly real fast.”

Chloe studied a passing cloud. She had never sensed anything in Joel except devotion to his fiancée. How had he managed to keep so much hidden? Why could she sense layers of emotion in old houses, and be so blind and deaf to what went on inside people right
now
?

“I do believe that at first, Carlisle just wanted to get the bowl for Nika,” Roelke said soberly. “‘Nika’s had too many hard breaks already,’ Carlisle said. ‘She won’t accept financial help from me. And that old bitch gave the bowl away. It should belong to Nika. She should at least have first dibs on writing it up.’”

Roelke glanced at Chloe. “That whole thing about getting an article published …?”

“That is important to Nika,” Chloe said. “But I’d like to think that she wouldn’t have accepted the bowl if it was stolen from the historical site.”

“So she says. And I do believe her.”

Thank God for small favors.

“But after Carlisle realized that his gambling debts had gotten him into serious trouble, he thought he could sell the bowl. He rationalized that it wasn’t
really
stealing because it should have been Nika’s anyway.”

“That logic is a little twisted.”

“Desperate people’s logic usually is. Anyway, he broke into the trailer to look for it. Then he thought you might have found it, and taken it home, so he tried to break into your house. He swore that Engel had given him the impression that you’d be at your parents’ house that night.”

Chloe thought back. “And I assume Joel was the one who broke into Kvaale that night you got called out?”

Roelke nodded. “He said he’d been at Sasso’s that evening with you and Nika, and heard somebody say something about storing a damaged artifact in the attic of one of the old houses. He took Nika’s key and went out to the Kvaale house to see if someone had tucked the bowl upstairs.”

“What about the rock through my window? He must have known by then that I didn’t have the bowl.”

“He was panicking.” Roelke picked up a cookie, put it back down. “Carlisle was trying to scare you into quitting. He said he was just trying to take care of Nika.”

Chloe frowned, trying to parse that through. Then, “Oh. I get it. He thought that if I quit, Petty might give my job to Nika.” The curator job offered what Nika’s internship did not: a reasonable salary, stability, benefits, professional recognition. It wouldn’t have been that simple, of course; Nika would have had to compete for the job.
Will
have to, Chloe reminded herself, once Ralph Petty fires me.

Well, she’d face that on Monday. “What about Mr. Solberg?”

“Carlisle denied being there. I think he was lying so he could get out on bail long enough to talk to Nika.” Roelke made a palms-up gesture. “The Dane County crime scene guys thought that Mr. Solberg hit his head on the corner of the desk. Maybe Carlisle startled him. Maybe he shoved him. Maybe Mr. Solberg got scared when he saw Joel, and tripped.”