Copper Heart (26 page)

“It feels like that?”

“I guess I should try to talk to her first, but…in the beginning I liked how focused she was. I’ve never liked women who just go along with everything. But now Anita seems to want me to be like that too.”

“Yes, I think you should talk to her. Maybe she’s already over it and doesn’t want to split up after all. But if you have problems on Saturday night, come out to the farm again. I’m going to need a dinner date.” I told him about the Copper Cup Bar & Grill’s stripper situation and my promise to the restaurant manager to go see if everything was legit. I wanted to bring a companion so no one would think I was on the prowl for a man.

“I’m always up for going to see a stripper,” Koivu said with a grin. For that comment he got my paper cup thrown at him, which Detective Antikainen managed to dodge as he entered the room.

The Kivinens lived on a rise behind the mine in a house that had once served as the official residence of the director of the mining company. The city had been forced to take the property along with the mine area and, according to hearsay, was leasing it to Kivinen for a scant three thousand marks a month. The house stood alone surrounded by birch trees, on the crest of its own little hill. On one side was a panoramic view of the Sump and on the other stood the Old Mine. Kivinen had to stroll only a few minutes through the forest if he wanted to walk to work.

I had never been inside the house before, even though the mining company CEO’s son had been in my sister Eeva’s class, and had thrown a few class parties there. Based on Eeva’s descriptions, the house had been a veritable castle without the towers, three stories of luxury. In that same spirit, we set out in the department’s Saab instead of my Lada, since it seemed more suitable for Kivinen’s driveway.

A colonnade decorated the main entrance, on the Sump side. When I rang the doorbell, I was certain a butler would answer. To my disappointment, Mrs. Kivinen herself came to the door
dressed in a blue silk housecoat. I introduced Koivu, who was staring wide-eyed at the lion statues guarding the entrance hall.

“You probably came to ask about that other murder. It did happen practically under our drawing room window. I’m afraid we were asleep then though. Aren’t these lions atrocious? Apparently they were an acquisition of the first director of the mining company. For some reason, Seppo wanted to save them. This house came largely furnished, you know. We still have very little here of our own.”

Mrs. Kivinen was talking to us as if we were reporters rather than police officers. Maybe she expected Koivu to start snapping photographs.

“Perhaps we could sit in the library,” Barbro Kivinen said, leading us from the entry into the room of my dreams. Stuffed bookcases stretched from floor to ceiling on every wall. The first two things that caught my eye as I glanced quickly around were a leather-bound set of English classics in the original language and at least a hundred volumes of Strindberg in both Finnish and Swedish. Was
The Son of a Servant
one of Kivinen’s favorite reads?

Between the shelves, little tables and leather chairs were strewn. Against one wall was an oak writing desk nearly eight feet by five, and against another, a fireplace. Two large windows faced west, opening onto a hillscape of birch trees. The only thing missing was the scotch decanter.

“Would you care for coffee?”

Without waiting for an answer, Mrs. Kivinen rang a bell next to her armchair. A moment later, a woman who seemed to be an honest-to-God parlor maid—even though she wasn’t wearing an apron or a white bonnet—walked into the room. Suddenly I felt as though I had been thrust into an Agatha Christie mystery. Of
course if that were the case the parlor maid would have conjured up a salver of sherry and I would have had to ask for crème de cassis.

On the way over, Koivu and I had agreed that I would handle the questioning. Having recovered from the lions, he pulled his notebook out of his pocket and readied his pen. Convincing myself that this library shared the same reality as my hometown took a while. When the maid brought the coffee and cake, Koivu and I politely took what was offered, although I felt like I had coffee running out my ears.

“Did you know Jari Korhonen, the victim from the night before last?” I finally managed to ask.

Barbro Kivinen sipped her coffee black, and she did not appear to be touching the cake.

“I couldn’t say I knew him personally. But I know the names and faces of all of our employees at the Old Mine. Korhonen was also one of the long-term unemployed and we were receiving an employment subsidy to keep him on.” Barbro made it sound as if Jaska wouldn’t have had any other opportunities to find work without this support. “I noticed him at the gala on Friday dressed entirely inappropriately and clearly intoxicated, which I admit I found slightly distressing. But fortunately he disappeared early on in the evening.”

This was not putting me in a friendly mood. Apparently the same caste system dominated Barbro Kivinen’s world as the one that ruled my early childhood. Why had she agreed to marry the son of a miner then? Judging from her current digs, the decision hadn’t hurt her any.

“You said you didn’t hear anything strange from the direction of the Sump on Wednesday night?”

“Our bedrooms are up on the top floor and the windows face the Old Mine. Would you like to come and see?”

I shook my head no.

“One can neither see nor hear anything in that direction from them. And besides, it was raining that night. An old metal roof like this is quite loud in the rain.”

“You’ve already been interviewed about Meritta Flöjt’s death, but we’ve received some new information since then.” I decided to get straight to the point even if it might mean inviting her husband’s wrath.

“Do you mean my husband’s relationship with her last spring? I’ve been waiting for someone to dig that up.”

Barbro Kivinen smiled when she saw my expression of astonishment.

“This wasn’t Seppo’s first extramarital dalliance by any means. I’ve learned there’s nothing to be gained by getting upset over them. He doesn’t know everything about my life either. Still, this marriage and partnership works quite well. Neither of you are married, are you?” she asked, looking from Koivu to me. “Young, single people can afford to maintain all sorts of idealistic notions.”

Mrs. Kivinen poured more coffee into our cups. Not knowing what to say next, I took another piece of cake and crammed it into my mouth.

Fortunately, Barbro continued her monologue: “Of course, my husband has probably assured you that I don’t know anything about the whole affair. That was very gallant of him, since it would have given me a fine motive for murder. It would look better for him if I knew about the relationship. But the affair was over in any case. Meritta Flöjt was an aesthete, and she chose Adonis over Seppo Kivinen. I don’t wonder why Seppo was a little churlish for a while around May Day. Losing out to someone younger and more handsome would injure
anyone’s self-esteem.” Barbro Kivinen’s voice was as sharp as a cat’s claw.

“But I suppose our same story applies to that night as to last Friday. We were sleeping blissfully, each in our own bed. And besides, I know my husband. Seppo wouldn’t kill out of jealousy. He wouldn’t sacrifice all of this. He’s risen so far. After we moved into this house, he told me how once he and a couple of other local boys wandered onto this property and the caretaker ran them off with his German shepherds. He wouldn’t endanger what he’s achieved here. And the same goes for me. But now, unfortunately, I have to ask you to leave. When Seppo’s secretary made this appointment she didn’t know that I had a massage scheduled for two fifteen.”

In her blue housecoat, Barbro Kivinen looked like a queen whose every whim must be obeyed. So we slunk away like scolded lap dogs.

“Would Mrs. Kivinen kill to keep all that?” Koivu asked as we were driving back to the police station.

“What do you mean?”

“What if Kivinen was still crazy about Flöjt and promised to leave his wife?”

“I don’t know. But I can imagine just about any kind of melodrama playing out in that house. Barbro seems like a pretty cold woman. I have a hard time imagining her getting so mad she would throw someone off the Tower. And I can’t see her even agreeing to talk with someone like Jaska.”

“You don’t like her?”

“I wouldn’t go quite that far. There’s always something fascinating about people who know what they want,” I said, paraphrasing Barbro.

“But living with them isn’t much fun.” Koivu sighed.

Soon after we arrived at the station, Koivu took off to Joensuu to write his report, but promised he would come back the next day on the seven o’clock bus to accompany me to the Copper Cup and see the stripper. I tried to reach Ella, but her answering machines at work and at home said she would be away all day Friday. I left messages on both, telling her that she had been seen on the mine hill the night of Meritta’s murder and instructing her to contact me immediately if she preferred talking to me instead of Detective Sergeant Järvisalo.

The little copper key was still waiting on my desk. What on earth did it open? What if Jaska had found what he was looking for at Meritta’s house and then hid it somewhere? But where?

Then a new place occurred to me. The band room. I wondered if the key was still the same one used to open the other doors at the school. Calling my parents, I arranged to borrow my father’s key to the school.

The band room door was as stiff as always, and I had to push on it for a while, but it opened. No one practiced here anymore except Jaska’s band, since the new youth center offered much better spaces with a bathroom and windows even. Jaska and company had inherited the high school basement by accident, and presumably he and Pasi and Johnny had felt ancient compared to the crowd at the youth center. With Jaska gone, Pasi might have to find a new home for his drum kit and the keyboardist for his ties. The bass was lying on the table, along with Johnny’s guitar. Only Jaska had taken his home; he had always been careful with his equipment.

I decided to start with the music shelf. Nothing out of the ordinary, just overflowing ashtrays, a dried piece of rye bread, a crushed juice carton, and piles of sheet music. Afraid of becoming too nostalgic by rummaging around in the familiar songs, I just
shook the books and thicker stacks to see if anything fell out from between the pages. Then I checked in the guitar cases and drums. I dug around in the chair cushions. Nothing. The last thing was the couch. It was a fold-out model, and under the seat cushions was a storage box for bed linens. Jaska had stashed things there before.

Just as he had done recently. Under a truly disgusting blanket and pillow, I found a half-empty vodka bottle and a sack of clinking beer bottles. Jaska’s emergency supply. The empty bottles hidden in the couch were sufficient to redeem for a pint at the Copper Cup. Sometimes he would bring women here, and he had probably spent the night on occasion too when he was so drunk he didn’t have the nerve to go home. But there was nothing in the room or under the couch that the small copper key could have fit.

Then an idea began to take shape in my mind. Could Jaska have met his murderer here? The school building stood abandoned during the summer, so it would be a safe place to rendezvous. And a very natural place, if the person he had been meeting was Johnny.

I closed up the couch and sat down, leaning against the cigarette-smoke stained back. I had spent so much time sitting here waiting for the others, listening hopefully for steps in the hallway, wondering what if it wasn’t another member of Rat Poison? What if it was Johnny? Distinguishing the different footsteps had been easy, the stamping of our drummer, Jaska’s kicking and shuffling, and Johnny’s quick soccer-player’s steps. Even if I couldn’t tell from his steps, he always flung the door open the same way.

Damn it, Johnny, where have you disappeared to?

Picking up his guitar, I started plucking something incoherent and then as if by accident fell into the first bars of “Scarborough Fair.”

That’s when I heard the door open and those familiar quick steps. The place had ripped me out of my police role once again, because without thinking I sprang up and screamed Johnny’s name. As I burst into the stairwell, I heard the steps turn back up the stairs and the door shut with a resounding thud. In the seconds it took me to fumble it open again, Johnny had disappeared. Standing in the empty schoolyard, I called his name in vain.

I didn’t bother to go after him though. He wasn’t going to be able to hide much longer in a town this size now that I knew where he had been sleeping. I went back and looked at the juice carton and dried rye crust still in its packaging. The bread had been packed only the day before. If Jaska had used this as a base, then why not Johnny too? If I would have had the presence of mind to keep my mouth shut, I could have caught him. Whether I was more annoyed or relieved, I wasn’t really sure.

Although I didn’t think Johnny would come back, I left a note on the table telling him about the warrant for his arrest. Then I took the band room keys to the station and told the boys to check on the basement at regular intervals.

At the end of the day, I stopped by to tell my parents I couldn’t return their keys quite yet. While I was there, they managed to talk me into staying for the whitefish they had smoked that morning. Somehow sitting at my parents’ table felt silly—eating off the same old plates, observing how the house remained the same after I had left and changed so much.

My dad had also spoken with Uncle Pena’s doctor, the one who seemed convinced that Pena’s attacks were brought on by the local news—though what caused the initial stroke remained unknown.

“There was definitely something going on with Pena and Meritta,” my father said contemplatively. “Over winter vacation
I spent a couple of days out at the farm felling trees in the backwoods, and once I happened to answer the phone when Meritta called. It was like Pena didn’t want to talk while I was there; I remember wondering if our eternal bachelor was a little infatuated with her…”