by Ann Yost
Some of us are content to stay and make a life surrounded by older generations and the peers we’ve known since we were little Lutherans. I wanted to see what else (and who else) there was in the world so I enrolled in a law school downstate. My mother refers to this as the time I ran away.
It went fairly well for a few months but in the spring, lightning struck when I fell violently in love, dropped out of school, married and moved to Washington, D.C. Six months later I was back in Red Jacket sleeping in my childhood bed with the glow-in-the-dark stars plastered on the ceiling and much the worse for wear.
But that was a year ago. Nowadays I run Bait and Stitch, a hybrid fishing-slash-knitting supply shop on Main Street and, like everyone else in our little town, I wear more than one hat. At the moment, I’m standing in for Pops, my stepdad, Carl Lehtinen, who was injured in a snowmobile hit-and-run collision in November, which is why Arvo wants me to investigate Liisa Pelonen’s death.
“One other thing, Hatti,” Pauline said. “I think we should agree not to tell anyone about this until the end of the weekend. All of us, including Liisa, worked hard on the festival. She wouldn’t want to see it spoiled.” She turned to her husband. “Do you agree, dear?”
He shook his leonine head with its mat of tight, blond curls.
“Our girl would not want the festival spoiled.”
I braced myself as the thought brought tears to his eyes but suddenly they flew open.
“Voi! The pageant! Who will be St. Lucy?”
I caught a quick glimpse of Ronja Laplander’s face when she got the call telling her the dream for Astrid had come true.
“I don’t think,” I said, “that will be a problem.”
Half an hour later I’d slogged through the foot of snow that covered the lawns of the funeral home and my family’s Queen Anne, changed clothes and dropped into bed.
“What a day,” I complained to my companion. “What a conundrum! There appears to be no reason for anyone to have killed Liisa Pelonen and no way in which it could be done and yet the girl’s dead. Geez Louise. The last thing we need on the Keweenaw is another murder.”
Larry, an excellent listener, even for a basset hound, said nothing. He just draped himself over my stomach and allowed me to rub the soft skin behind his droopy ears.
It’s an effective form of meditation and, in fact, beats out soft music, sleeping pills, and even warm milk.
Two
A cheery voice jerked me awake the next morning.
Betty Ann Pritula, the Keweenaw’s answer to Martha Stewart, is the host of The Finnish Line, or as Pops likes to call it, The Finnish-Me-Off Line. The indefatigable woman comes across our airwaves at six o’clock every morning (including Sunday) with all the news that’s fit (or unfit) to print, including births, deaths, potlucks, PTA meetings, traffic changes, weather, recipes and what she calls editorial opinion but which is, in reality, gossip.
A Keweenaw booster of the first water, Betty Ann’s style is folksy, conversational, and friendly, but the bottom line is that she simply loves to tell people what to do.
“Roll up your sleeves,” she commanded today, “and roll out your dough! We are going to make old-fashioned gingerbread houses and, never fear, I will guide you through every step!”
I pulled on a pair of bright red corduroy jeans and a light green sweatshirt emblazoned with the words, LONDON, PARIS, NEW YORK, ISHPEMING, while Betty Ann touted her own recipe for royal icing.
“This stuff sticks so good that if they’d used it at the battle of Jericho, those walls would not have come tumbling down,” she bragged. “I’ve found just the right combination of egg whites, lemon juice, almond flavoring, and meringue powder. You can’t go wrong with my patented icing. Good gracious me, it’s as reliable as Vicks.”
Vicks. I froze, my fingers locked around the handle of my hairbrush. I’d been so focused on the irritating chirp of Betty Ann’s voice that I’d almost forgotten about the corpse in the sauna and the fact that I’d been assigned to investigate Liisa Pelonen’s untimely death.
“And be sure you stop by the first annual Finnish Christmas Pageant in Red Jacket today,” Betty Ann continued. “It is called Pikkujoulu, or ‘Little Christmas.’ For those of you not in the know, ‘Little Christmas’ refers to the parties we hold in our homes during the early weeks of December. Finnish arts and crafts will be sold, as well as refreshments from Main Street Floral and Fudge and Patty’s Pasties. Join us under the brand new tarp in the Copper County High School parking lot on the corner of Main and Church Streets. At two o’clock the action will move to St. Heikki’s Finnish Lutheran Church—that’s the one that looks like Quasimodo’s summer home—up on Walnut Street where the young people of Red Jacket will perform a pageant in honor of St. Lucy, the martyr who chose blindness and death over marriage.”
The cheeriness in her voice did not waver as she mentioned the tragic, if apocryphal, death of St. Lucy and it occurred to me that she was the female counterpart to Arvo. I knew they were fast friends.
“This year’s St. Lucy is the lovely Liisa Pelonen, from Ahmeek,” Betty Ann informed her listeners. “Liisa has a wonderful singing voice and intends to pursue a career in music.”
Well. For once Arvo had not contacted his press agent. I wondered, with a pang, if he’d stayed up all night with Liisa’s body.
I felt a little sick as I snapped off the radio and pattered down to the kitchen, fed Larry and let him out then started the coffee. Just as I poured my first cup, my cell phone rang. Well, rang is probably the wrong term. It chimed out the first bars of Meatloaf’s Bat Out of Hell. It was half-past six and the sound jangled my nerves. I checked the caller I.D.
“Hey, Sofi,” I said, unable to keep the accusatory note out of my voice. “What’s up?”
“You. And me. It’s the day of Arvo’s stupid festival, remember? So I’m at the shop mixing up a fresh batch of eggnog fudge. And don’t make a face. People from out-of-town like something seasonal.”
“Why can’t you just do chocolate walnut and top it with sugar decorations, like holly and candy canes?”
“Is that really what you want to talk about at this hour?”
I didn’t really want to be awake at this hour and I certainly didn’t want to face the day ahead.
“What do you need?”
“You to come down here and help me shlep the fudge over to the festival. It’s sure to be snowing and I want you to drop me at the door. About ten o’clock?”
“Sure,” I said. “I need to stop at the B and B and then at the shop to check on Einar, anyway. But why are you calling me this early?”
“Because,” she said, “there’s something suspicious going on and I want to know what it is.”
I sucked in a quick breath. Was it possible our oh-so-efficient grapevine had already broadcast the news of Liisa’s death?
“What, uh, are you talking about? And why would I know anything about it?”
“Oh, little sister. Don’t ever try to play poker. Your voice alone is a dead giveaway. I want to know why Astrid Laplander is substituting for Liisa Pelonen in the pageant this afternoon.”
I stalled to give myself time to think.
“Where did you hear that?”
“Horse’s mouth. Ronja, herself.”
It was a pun and a cruel one. We had once upon a time observed that Ronja Laplander, for all her short stature, had a face like a horse. Unfortunately, we’d done it in front of our mother who promptly washed our mouths out with soap.
“C’mon, Hatti. You’re the worst liar I know.”
“I don’t lie,” I said, indignantly.
“You don’t lie well, I’ll say that. You can’t even really prevaricate. I can always tell when you know something and don’t want to give it up. Hell’s bells, everybody can tell. What gives?”
“You’re talking so fast,” I said. “How much coffee have you had this morning?”
“I had to be up at three a.m. Does that answer your question? Now
answer mine.”
“What did, uh, Ronja say?”
“She was waiting outside the shop when I got here at four. She wants me to make a fresh evergreen wreath for Astrid in time for the pageant. She said Liisa’s still sick with a sore throat and fever. But I know how much Arvo wants his guest to play St. Lucy and doubt whether he’d agree to the switch unless Liisa was dead.”
The comment hit me hard and, for an instant, I didn’t speak at all.
“I know you called Ronja last night about the St. Lucy thing,” Sofi said, but her voice had gentled a little. “There’s something wrong, isn’t there? I mean, more than a sore throat.”
I made a decision.
“I’ll tell you what I know,” I said, “but not now. Not on the phone. Later, after we get to the festival.”
“Okay,” Sofi said, but it seemed she wasn’t ready to throw in the towel.
“There’s something really wrong with Liisa, isn’t there? What is it? Did Ronja break into the funeral home last night and break her legs?”
“No,” I said, shocked at how close she was to the truth. “I’ll pick you up at ten.”
I disconnected the phone, poured a cup of coffee, and pondered. Sofi had unintentionally sparked an idea in my mind.
The day before the parade Pauline Maki had been shopping in Bait and Stitch. She’d just bought a skein of pearly pink washable wool to make a hat and mittens for Liisa and she’d started to tell me about her “brainstorm” for a project for our knitting circle, the Keweenawesome Knitters.
“Brace yourself,” she’d said, with one of her pleasant smiles, “I’m thinking heirloom lace.”
Heirloom lace is arguably the most sophisticated, complicated type of knitting there is, in part, because of the complex charts that have to be read and stitches that have to be counted and in part because delicate lace weight yarn, which is easily split, is not easy to work with.
“Contrary to popular thought,” Pauline said, “lace is not just yarn-overs and knit two together. It is beautiful and mysterious and we are all going to learn its secrets while making our own Shetland Wedding Ring shawl. I’ve already ordered skeins of a very fine yarn spun from the chin hair of the musk ox on the Shetland Islands. The shawls we knit will be so delicate that each will be able to fit through the center of a wedding ring.”
“Wedding ring?” the door had crashed open so hard the little bell I’d attached flew off its hinges and caromed across the wooden floor. “You are planning her wedding already? Who is she marrying? Someone else’s boyfriend, then?”
The angry words had exploded from Ronja Laplander, owner, with her husband of the Copper Kettle, a souvenir gift shop. She steamed across the floor toward us, the heavy unibrow under her dark, Dutch-boy hairstyle contorted like a spastic caterpillar and her small fists dug into her wide hips. Ronja’s default mood, unless she was speaking of her wares or her five daughters, was grumpy. For the past week, though, she’d behaved like a category four hurricane, spewing angry words like flotsam and jetsam at everything in her path. At the moment, she reminded me of a bottom-heavy Great Lakes barge steaming through the Soo Locks that connect the waters of Lake Superior with those of Lake Huron.
“I beg your pardon,” Pauline had said, peering down at the other woman. She sounded bewildered, and no wonder. People in town did not speak like that to Pauline Maki but Ronja was beyond considering anything except her own sense of ill-use.
“Your husband is not a king. He is not a dictator. He is just a citizen, like everybody else and yet he took it upon himself to ruin our tradition. He should be arrested. Boiled in oil. He should be beheaded!”
I noticed Einar watching, out of the corner of my eye. His placid expression had turned grim, as if he expected Ronja to carry out her suggestions.
“I don’t understand,” Pauline said and I thought that was probably true. Although she had lived among us for twenty-five years and although, in carrying out Arvo’s schemes, she probably did more good for the community than anyone else, I had always had the sense that she did not understand us. I felt a flicker of compassion for the woman. Whether or not Arvo was king was debatable. But Pauline was, for all intents and purposes, the power behind the throne.
“This was Astrid’s year to be St. Lucy.”
Understanding registered in Pauline’s fine brown eyes.
“Ah. Arvo gave the role to Liisa and that has upset you. I’m sorry for it. I know my husband can be a bit, well, high-handed.”
I spotted a slight easing of the deep lines bracketing Ronja’s mouth and knew that Pauline Maki had found the best thing to say. And then disaster struck.
“What if your daughter—Astrid, is it?—What if she is St. Lucy next year?”
I groaned, inwardly, as Ronja drew herself up to her full five-feet of height and blasted deadly words into the taller woman’s face.
“Next year is for Valentina! And then Stella, then Olga, then Vesta. You understand nothing about St. Lucy. Nothing! But then, you do not have a daughter!”
The natural color drained out of Pauline’s face leaving two bright spots of blush on her cheeks. For a moment, I thought she would faint. But she pulled herself together (Pauline always pulled herself together) and, at the same time, I grabbed Ronja’s thick forearm and steered her toward my backroom.
“Let me get you a cup of coffee,” I said, attempting to drown out her protests. I managed to keep her out of sight until Pauline, forgetting all about her newly purchased pink yarn, was gone.
“That wasn’t fair, you know,” I said to Ronja. “That St. Lucy pick was Arvo’s fault. He’s besotted with the girl.”
Ronja had calmed down, somewhat, and she nodded.
“I know, Hatti. But I just wanted it for Astrid. I wanted it so much. And, anyway, it was wrong. If we don’t have tradition, what do we have?”
As the incident came back to me I couldn’t help wondering if the cosmos had been distressed by Arvo’s altering of tradition and whether that had had anything to do with Liisa’s death.
Nonsense, I told myself. But I, like other Finnish Americans, believe there are unseen forces at work and that there is a clear theme to our earthly life that can be summed up in our proverbs:
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
As ye sew, so shall ye reap.
Every stick has two ends.
What goes around comes around.
Was that what had happened to Liisa? Had she been felled by Karma? I shook my head. Only, I thought, if Karma had taken the form of a human being. Somebody had caused that gash on the girl’s head.
Somebody had killed her.
Three
Most of the houses on the Keweenaw are typical of the UP, more than seventy-five years old, wooden, two-story affairs with steeply pitched rooflines to allow gravity to aid in snow removal and ground-floor windows set high off the ground to prevent drifts from blocking the light.
Calumet Street is a little different.
For one thing, it is the highest point in town and, from our second-floor windows and balconies, we have a great view of the town. No doubt it was the setting that prompted early copper barons to choose the street for building their homes. Most of the homes boast unattached garages that face onto an alley running behind the street which has allowed the front yards to blend together with no unsightly driveways.
Three houses in from the intersection of Tamarack and facing south is the Maki Funeral Home. Next to it is a Queen Anne Victorian, painted yellow with white gingerbread trim and a fish-scale covered witch’s hat tower. My family has lived there for the past quarter of a century.
To our west is a large, rambling structure that was once a family home then became a rooming house, then a motor inn and finally, my aunt and uncle ran it as a kind of residential hotel. Several years ago they decided to retire to Lake Worth, Florida, one of the few Finnish-American communities located in the sunbelt and widely considered the third point in the Finnish golden triangle that al
so includes the Keweenaw and Helsinki.
Aunt and Uncle Risto bequeathed the shabby barn of a building to my cousin Elli, a tiny individual who looks like a fairy but who has the energy and drive of Hercules. Finnish Americans speak with respect about the quality of Sisu which is a combination of perseverance, determination, and endurance. Sisu is Elli’s middle name. She spent three years arranging loans, hiring contractors to renovate the kitchen and bathrooms, doing carpentry work herself as well as scrubbing and polishing the scarred walnut of the grand staircase. She scoured the countryside for antiques and light fixtures, for carpets and stained glass panels similar to those used in the hotel’s heyday, 1910. She even managed to find facsimiles of flowered draperies and awnings and her piece-de-resistance—the elephant hide wallpaper in the dining room.
Elli’s renovated bed and breakfast gets five stars in the Michelin Guide, or it would if it were listed there, and is probably the best known hotel in the UP.
I was gone most of the time, out on my ill-fated adventure but in contact with Elli and I approved everything she did except for the name.
“The Leaping Deer? I don’t know, El. I’m afraid it’ll remind people of roadkill.”
“Nonsense,” she’d laughed. “Most of the folks will come in the summer and they’ll be so preoccupied with blackflies, they won’t even think about deer on the highway.”
That was vintage Elli. Smart, funny and intent on her mission.
The bed and breakfast had become a gathering point in the community, as Elli could be counted on to provide plenty of food for breakfast, brunches and supper smorgasbords, and she never turned anyone away. When we held an event, like the St. Lucy Festival, others in the community contributed their specialties, including hotdishes, Jell-O molds, egg coffee and bars along with several Finnish specialties. Those volunteers who had been the engine of the church since its inception, had, for decades been referred to as Lutheran Church Basement Women. Nowadays they were called the Ladies Aid, and they wielded enormous power, none more so than their president, Mrs. Edna Moilanen.