A Yarn Over Murder

by Ann Yost

  As soon as we stepped into the hall, I saw the question in Sonya’s eyes. And then she was asking it.

  “Do you think Arvo will be surprised at this news?”

  I knew what she meant. Statistics tell us that when a young woman is raped and/or murdered, the perp is most likely a family member.

  “Arvo didn’t rape her,” I said, one hundred percent certain. “And I don’t believe he killed her, either.” Then I pictured Liisa, standing on the back of Ollie’s sleigh, her face pinched and white with cold. Or, was it worry? And then there was the fact that she’d been dressed to go out last night. Had she been running away? If so, from what? Arvo?

  “What about the timing? Does six weeks mean anything to you?”

  I counted backward to the middle of October.

  “Geez Louise! The Harvest Dance.”

  One of Sonya’s smooth, dark eyebrows lifted.

  “She attended it with a date. Matti Murso.”

  “I think,” Sonya said, “he should be your first official interview.”

  The inn was very festive for the Saturday night dinner, the last smorgasbord of the St. Lucy Festival. Elli had substituted real candles for the electric ones on her Christmas tree and on the Scandinavian candle stand in the window and she'd decorated the antler chandelier in the parlor with the red-and-white Nordic Christmas balls the circle had knitted in November. Aunt Ianthe was plunking out Jingle Bells on the upright piano and several guests, including those from Lansing, were standing nearby with cups of spiked eggnog, singing along. Miss Irene, waiting to play the more musically complex carols, was ensconced in one of Elli’s plump armchairs, working on a dainty project in pink—no doubt for Mrs. Kaukola’s baby girl.

  In the dining room, Elli had pushed her small, square pine tables to make two long, parallel tables—she liked to call them crocodiles. Both were covered with bright red linen runners and strategically placed evergreen wreaths as well as formal place settings. The food would go on the wide coffee stand at one end of the room.

  The dining room itself was deserted but we could hear talking and laughing in the kitchen, including one male voice, and just as we reached the swinging door, it opened to reveal a man carrying a giant tray over his shoulder with such ease that he must have been a professional waiter in a previous lifetime.

  Max Guthrie.

  Pleasure surged through me and I greeted him only to find myself totally ignored. He set the tray down on the serving table and unloaded it. By the time he turned to speak to us, Sonya had slipped out a side door into the corridor.

  “For goodness sake,” I said to him, “what’s the matter?” He found a smile for me and produced a little laugh.

  “There was a lot riding on my shoulder,” he quipped. “I just didn’t want to drop it. So I’ll see you tonight.” He moved fast, brushed a quick kiss on my cheek and disappeared. When I stepped into the kitchen a few seconds later, he’d left the inn.

  “What happened to Max?” I asked Elli.

  “He had to get back to Namagok. He’s got some guests checking in tonight.”

  “For fishing?”

  “It must be ice fishing,” she said. “Listen, I need you to make the coffee and set out the cups. Lickety-split, okay?”

  Sofi arrived a few minutes later and she, Elli, Sonya and I set up all the food including, among other things, Mrs. Sorensen’s ham and prunes, Aunt Ianthe’s kulta salantti, or golden salad composed of carrots, mandarin oranges, orange juice and honey, Diane Hakala’s corn pudding, Ronja Laplander’s calico beans and the tender whitefish filets called mojakka that were Elli’s specialty.

  The dozen or so guests had lined up at the serving table and the Reverend Sorensen was about to offer a prayer of thanks, when we heard the front door open. A moment later, Pauline and Arvo Maki appeared in the dining room. There was a forced smile on Arvo’s handsome face and Pauline looked like the proverbial image of death warmed over. They should both, I thought, be at home under warm blankets, but I wasn’t surprised that they had made the effort to be here. It was typical of both of them to do their duty.

  The Makis tried to smile at the greetings; Hyvaa Joulu! and Merry Christmas! They’d obviously been devastated by the death of their visitor. How would the others react when they knew? Ronja, for example, who was basking in the compliments about Astrid’s performance as St. Lucy. Would she take some satisfaction in the girl’s demise? And what about the Hakalas? They would express horror, of course, because they are civilized human beings but would some part of Diane feel that, with Liisa’s death, justice had been done?

  It was human nature to have mixed feelings but that was a far cry from committing a murder. And yet someone in our tight-knit community had crossed the line that separates the folks who occasionally say, “I’d like to kill her” from the ones who are willing to do the deed. Was it Matti Murso? Or was there someone else, someone cleverer than Toivo Murso’s son? Someone I hadn’t yet identified?

  It was very weird eating traditional Finnish foods on this holiday, with neighbors I’d known all my life and wondering which, if any of them, had spent last night murdering the girl who’d been chosen to play St. Lucy. I picked up my too-hot coffee, burned my tongue and let out a gasp and that caused Aunt Ianthe’s head to snap around like the rubber band on a slingshot.

  “Voi! Henrikki! Don’t tell me you ate a bite of Edna’s cabbage! You know it does not agree with you.” Miss Irene had clapped her hands together and brought them to her mouth in an expression of horror. “You know, Irene! You know! Remember that time Hatti ate the cabbage and her whole face swelled up and we had to rush her to Doc Laitimaki over in Frog Creek?”

  The scene had been re-enacted many times over the years. Many, many times. Miss Irene, the loyal sidekick, as always played her part.

  “Oh, mercy me,” she exclaimed, her hands at her breast her eyes on me. “Oh, Hatti, you were so sick that time, then.”

  I had been sick. It was nearly twenty-five years ago, now, at a church potluck. My folks were on a trip and the aunts were in charge of Sofi and me. I was caught (according to Aunt Ianthe, I confess I do not remember) with my fingers in or near Mrs. Moilanen’s vinegar cabbage and within a few minutes, someone noticed my face had swollen to beach-ball size. Doc Laitimaki said it was the mumps and the proximity to vinegar cabbage was a mere coincidence but Aunt Ianthe had never believed that and I had long ago stopped trying to convince her that I never had and never would eat vinegar cabbage.

  “I didn’t eat it,” I said when my aunt had quieted down. “I choked on the coffee. It was too hot.”

  There was a brief, universal silence as we waited for the familiar benediction. In just a few seconds, Miss Irene’s fluting voice filled the room.

  “Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give. Matthew.”

  The visitors appeared mildly puzzled but mostly resigned. Apparently, they’d become accustomed to our odd quirks.

  Edna Moilanen, while very fond of both Miss Irene and Aunt Ianthe, was understandably weary of the periodic attacks on her most famous dish and she was the one who changed the subject.

  “Pauline, are you certain we can obtain the proper wool to make authentic Shetland wedding ring shawls? Perhaps we should settle for something less rare and costly. Some of us are, you know, fledgling knitters.”

  All the locals knew Mrs. M. was not referring to herself. She had learned to knit, she was fond of saying, at her grandmother’s knee and had, over her lifetime, made dozens of scarves and hundreds of mittens. She had a tendency to point out projects that might be too difficult for new knitters. She may have been thinking about the beginners but I suspected that, mostly, she wanted to preserve the distinction (and superiority) between them and the masters.

  There was also the strong possibility that her nose was slightly out of joint as I had agreed to Pauline’s project idea without consulting her. In fact, I’d barely thought about the sug
gestion. I’d been distracted with the festival preparations and the police job and, perhaps, most of all, with the approach of the anniversary of my marital implosion. I hadn’t cared what project the knitting circle chose.

  Now, though, I was willing to go to the mat for the grieving surrogate mother.

  If Pauline wanted to make lace shawls, then, by Jiminy, as Pops would say, we’d make them.

  “The yarn arrived yesterday,” I fibbed. “And Pauline has made photocopies of the directions. I have a dozen size 00 circular needles and we can start the lace knitting as soon as this week.” Thursday night had been designated for circle meetings to avoid conflicts with the town council meetings on Mondays, the school board meetings on Tuesdays, potluck and choir practice on Wednesdays, family night on Fridays and, of course, the Saturday night sauna.

  “Hatti, dear,” Mrs. Sorensen said, “I understand it is easy to lose your place while working on heirloom lace.”

  “Goodness me,” Aunt Ianthe interjected, at the spectre of not being able to knit and chat at the same time.

  “Pish-posh,” Mrs. Moilanen put in. “Lace is lace. It is just a bunch of yarn-overs and knit two together.”

  I held up a hand to forestall other comments.

  “Luckily,” I said, “Pauline has offered to walk us through the pattern, stitch by stitch, until we have memorized it.”

  “Like bingo,” Mrs. Moilanen said, dryly.

  “I’m afraid I don’t have much of a memory,” Miss Irene said, which, of course, was absurd since she’d memorized the entirety of the King James Version.

  “I’ll help you, dear,” Aunt Ianthe said, patting her hand. “We’ll get through it together. And, don’t worry, Henrikki, dear. Irene and I will bring a fresh batch of Joulutorttu.”

  Twelve

  Sofi left early to meet Charlie who had been with her father, while Elli settled her guests then set the tables for the morning smorgasbord. Sonya and I washed by hand Elli’s lovely Danish Christmas plates and then it was time to leave. The midwife and I put on our parkas and boots and stepped out onto the back porch. There was no wind and the snow seemed to float on the air. I yawned.

  “Sorry,” I said, belatedly covering my mouth. “I’m just so danged tired.” Sonya had stopped and was fumbling with something in her pocket. “What’s up?”

  “I found something during the pseudo autopsy.”

  “You mean besides the pregnancy?” It was a weak attempt at a joke and she didn’t laugh.

  “Jewelry. Liisa was wearing it around her neck. I didn’t want to mention it in front of Pauline in case she had given it to her, but the more I thought about it, the less likely that seemed.”

  “Very mysterious,” I said, holding out my hand, palm up, as she drizzled a chain into it. The pendant on the end was the last thing to drop.

  “The spider web in the middle of the circle is intended to catch and hold bad dreams and the feathers are supposed to transport the good dreams back to the sleeping child. The bad dreams disappear with the rising sun. It’s an Indian dreamcatcher.”

  I stared at the object in my hand as if it were a moon rock or the Hope Diamond. Unfortunately, it was something much more familiar.

  “Do you recognize it?” Sonya asked, softly.

  “It belonged to Miriam Night Wind, a fifteen-year-old from the Copper Eagle Reservation. She got pregnant and fled to Canada. Her son, Jace, gave it to me on our wedding day.”

  Sonya made a startled sound. “Oh, Hatti. I’m sorry.” I nodded.

  “The real question is how did it wind up, eighteen months later, around the neck of a dead girl?”

  Neither of us had any answer to that.

  “Let me walk you home,” Sonya said. I declined. I felt buffeted by memories and I wanted to be alone with them. There were plenty of good times. In the beginning, it had seemed like a fairytale. I hadn’t been looking for Prince Charming but he’d showed up anyway. He’d been tall, dark and enigmatic, a man of few words and so smitten that he claimed he could not let me go. Until he could, and did.

  I was still waiting for answers.

  I’d met Jace Night Wind during my first year at the University of Michigan law school in Ann Arbor. The mid-sized college town with its thousands of students jaywalking across the streets and tens of thousands of fans streaming toward the stadium on football Saturdays, the pizzas and beer that replaced pasties and pannukakku and the general clamor had been something of a culture shock to a girl brought up on the remote Keweenaw Peninsula but I’d loved it. Finally, I was getting to see the world.

  Toward the end of my first year, I went to see a guest lecturer speak on Indian rights. He wore his hair in a straight black ponytail but his eyes were gray. Silver-gray. With long, dark lashes. The talk was fascinating, or so I was told. I spent the entire event reminding myself there was no such thing as love at first sight. It turned out I was wrong.

  I’d never felt like that before and I hated the heaviness in my heart that I felt for the rest of the day. I was glad, in fact, to get a call from a rescue group I belonged to and happily trotted to a home on the edge of town to accept a cardboard carton of homeless puppies even though by the time I made it back to campus, it was sprinkling.

  A few blocks from my graduate dorm, the deluge increased and the puppies began to squeak with alarm as the soggy box began to collapse on them. Just as I was wondering what to do, an ancient Jeep Wrangler pulled up next to me and a tall, lean man unfolded himself from the seat, grabbed the limp box and bundled it and me into the vehicle. It should have been frightening or at least intimidating but the thing was, even with rain pelting down on him, Jace Night Wind looked appealing. I think it was those eyelashes.

  “Where to,” he shouted, against the noise of the pelting downpour.

  I told him the name of my dorm and he shook his head.

  “They don’t allow dogs.”

  “Oh, I know. I’ll hide them for a few days until I can find homes for them.”

  By now the puppies were squalling with fear and Jace put the standard shift vehicle into gear and headed off in the wrong direction.

  “Hey,” I protested. “Where are you taking us?”

  “Home,” he’d said. “To my home. And don’t give me any lip about being abducted by a stranger. I saw you in the lecture this morning.”

  He had? He’d noticed me? I felt as dizzy as Cinderella and I did not protest again as he parked behind a student apartment building and put his finger to his lips as we hustled the puppies up the backstairs.

  Several hours later, when everyone was dry and fed, and the six puppies were asleep, I asked the question that had been on my mind.

  “The dogs aren’t allowed here, either. How is this better than taking them to my room?”

  The gray eyes kindled and I felt engulfed in warmth.

  “If you don’t know yet, you will, Henrikki Lehtinen.”

  He turned out to be right. Apparently, Cupid had struck twice that day and from then on, for the next eighteen months, I’d experienced the incandescent joy of loving and being loved.

  A week later, after we’d found homes for the puppies and I’d dropped out of law school, we got married at the Washtenaw County Courthouse then we drove the Olive-green Wrangler to Washington D.C. where Jace started a Native American Law Center and I worked as his unpaid office manager. We lived in a tiny apartment on Capitol Hill and, at first, spent weekends exploring the city and the nearby Virginia countryside. And then the nonprofit began to grow and Jace began to travel.

  His trip to the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota happened during the first week of December and he told me he intended to make a stop on the Keweenaw to visit his grandfather, Chief Joseph Night Wind on the Copper Eagle Reservation just fifteen miles away from Red Jacket. He invited me to come with but, by then, we had a couple of other lawyers working with us and my presence was essential to the running of the office. I thanked him, spent more time on the phone with my sister and Elli and my mom
and dad, and began to decorate for Christmas. I thought it was important to represent both our cultures so I lugged home a much-too-large pine tree and covered it with straw ornaments and baskets and colored lights. I bought the ingredients for the fry bread Jace loved and for Joulutorttu the Christmas prune tarts.

  I was, in fact, in the middle of blending the stiff dough on the Friday afternoon Jace was due home. I was beyond excited and kept turning off the mixer to listen for his key in the front door.

  Finally, irritated with myself, I turned on the radio and in the middle of “Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer” I heard the key in the lock. I flew to the foyer, launched myself into his arms and hugged as hard as I could. It wasn’t the first time I’d greeted him that way and before he’d hugged me back so hard I could hear his heart beating fast and he’d buried his face in my waist-length hair.

  This time was different.

  I didn’t want to believe it but I knew it was true. He relaxed his hold on me and I stepped back and looked up into the gray eyes. There was no welcome there. No blazing heat. Just an expression of soul-deep empathy and I knew it was for me.

  “I’m sorry, Umlaut.”

  I swallowed around a sudden lump in my throat.

  “Sorry for what?”

  “It’s over.” He paused. “We’re over.”

  At first, I was a fish caught under the ice. I couldn’t speak. And then the ice melted and I couldn’t stop speaking. I couldn’t stop asking. Why? Why, why, why?

  He never lost his temper, never yelled at me. He repeated the apology and, eventually, told me to take the Jeep.

  “Take the Jeep where?”

  “Home,” he’d said, in a parody of the first time he’d referred to the place as ours. “Back to the Keweenaw. It’s over.”

  I don’t know how I got back. I don’t remember much about the eighteen-hour drive except for the stop in Toledo for gas when it occurred to me that I’d left the Joulutorttu dough on the counter in the mixer, like the Hebrews fleeing Egypt with only unleavened bread.