Bonereapers

by Jeanne Matthews

  “You didn’t ask Dybdahl what she was upset about?”

  “I didn’t have to. She was upset because of that note she let Erika get hold of. She was upset that she was the one who shot her boyfriend out of the saddle.”

  Sheridan pounded his fist on the table. “I was not her boyfriend.”

  “You would’ve been,” said Mahler. “Val wouldn’t have cared who you killed. I still can’t believe she was dumb enough to keep that note. I told her to burn it, but no-oh. She had a bee in her bonnet that you’d been hacked and thought she could trace the e-mail back to who sent it. In her mind, it was never going to be you.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Jake, but I didn’t kill Eftevang and if I was going to, I wouldn’t have written a note announcing my intention.” Sheridan had rallied since Dinah last saw him. He had shaved and put on a fresh shirt. And he seemed more in control, more willing to defend himself.

  “It doesn’t matter to me who you killed or why,” said Mahler. “My investment’s down the tubes. Your wife’s humiliated you, your girlfriend’s been clubbed to death, and the Norwegian police have evidence that links you to a murder. Guilty or innocent, you’re done in politics. Luckily, I always hedge my bets.”

  “Meaning what?” asked Keyes.

  Sheridan hooted. “Can’t you guess? He’s been secretly supporting another candidate. Is it Zeb Warren?”

  Thor appeared at the door and tapped. The policemen stood aside and he put his head inside. “We’re ready to interview Senator Sheridan now. Please follow me, sir.”

  “You’d better hope they don’t let me cast a vote on that GMO food labeling bill, Jake.” Sheridan stood up and marched out past the policemen without a backward glance.

  And then there were six, thought Dinah. The policemen closed the door and resumed their soldierly stance and disinterested gaze. She wondered if they were wired and everything that everyone said was being recorded. Could they do that in Norway without telling you?

  Her hands were still quaking. She clasped them together in her lap, tried not to dwell on the vision of Valerie’s blood staining her hand. How could she have failed to see the blood on that dumbbell? How could she not have felt it? She felt it now. She’d scrubbed her hands until they were chapped.

  Keyes took out his half-moon eyeglasses and placed them on his nose. “Is that true, Jake? Have you been secretly funding Zeb Warren?”

  “Don’t act so shocked, Whitney. Val’s told me how you operate. She worked for you for ten years. She ought to know. You’ve got your eye to the main chance twenty-four, seven. Your wife’s late husband wasn’t cold before you swept in with the flowers and candy and look at you now, a billionaire philanthropist. If you haven’t put out feelers to Warren’s people, I’ll eat my hat.”

  This time, the look of malice on Keyes’ face was flagrant. “A man with your vulnerabilities shouldn’t go out of his way to be offensive. You never know what repercussions will follow.”

  “Is that a threat?”

  “It’s a fact.”

  Mahler’s mouth crimped in a malign smile. “If Valerie were alive right now, she’d advise the both of us to keep our mouths shut.”

  Valerie’s posthumous advice put the quietus on everyone. Ten minutes of silence passed before Thor tapped on the door again. The policemen stood aside and he looked in at the rancorous faces around the table. His own face revealed nothing. Dinah tried to make eye contact with him, but he wouldn’t meet her eyes. “Mr. Mahler, if you will come with me, please?”

  Mahler pushed himself up from the table so forcefully that he knocked over his chair. He held Keyes eyes for a tense few seconds and went out without a word.

  And then there were five.

  Lee righted the overturned chair and motioned to Rod with his eyes. The two got up and moved into the corner to powwow. Lee wore a worried look. Whatever he was saying to Rod brought a worried look to his face, too. Dinah wished she could hear what they were mumbling about.

  Sheridan’s interview hadn’t taken long. Maybe he’d invoked his right to counsel, if there was such a right in Norway. And what questions was Thor asking? He must be trying to pinpoint the last time Valerie had been seen alive and by whom. How long had she been lying in that steam room? Dinah knew nothing of forensics except for the wizardry she saw on CSI. Could real medical examiners ascertain the time of Valerie’s death after even a few minutes in a steam room?

  The clash between Keyes and Mahler confirmed her suspicion of bad blood between the two. What vulnerabilities was Keyes referring to? Was this the specter of WikiLeaks again? Or Myzandia? It seemed pretty clear that Valerie and Mahler had been arguing about the authorship and legitimacy of Sheridan’s e-mail, but what had she argued with Dybdahl about? So far, there was only Mahler’s word that Val and the agriculture minister had argued at all. Dinah hoped that Thor would have the authority to question Dybdahl. If Mahler killed Val—and he gave the impression that he was plenty angry enough to have done it—he would want to put her in as many arguments as he could.

  Norris Frye poured himself a glass of water and shook his head. “It’s a tragedy, Whitney. A sad day for us all. Of course, I didn’t know Valerie well, but I understand she was a great asset to you. Same for Jake. And she was doing a bang-up job molding Colt’s image. You have to wonder, what was he thinking? Must’ve had it in his mind that Tillcorp’s troubles would come around to bite him and he couldn’t handle the pressure. Like he said, his life was under a microscope, false insinuations. The first murder, he probably just snapped. Didn’t know what he was doing. But killing Valerie, now, that was insane. The GOP will be better off with Zeb Warren. The charisma of a block of wood, but predictable.”

  “I don’t believe that Colt murdered either one of them,” said Keyes. “And can the holier-than-thou shit, Norris. You’ll get the third degree same as the rest of us.”

  Norris’ smugness grated on Dinah, too. He seemed to presume that he was the least likely suspect.

  Norris shrugged off Keyes’ put-down. “You may be right that Colt’s innocent. Erika is the one with the drinking problem and I believe she was out on the town the night Eftevang was murdered. She and her Norwegian boyfriend could have knifed him. They may even have killed poor Valerie before they disappeared. Whether Erika had a hand in Valerie’s murder or not, it really was all her fault.”

  “How do you figure that?” asked Dinah.

  “If she hadn’t pulled her disappearing stunt, we’d be home by now. Valerie would be alive and maybe Colt’s candidacy, too.”

  “Don’t get too far ahead of yourself, Norris.” Keyes’ normally refined manners had turned nasty. “You could wind up with a libel suit or better still, your wife could wind up with a keepsake photo of you in the sack with Dybdahl’s pretty little assistant.”

  Thor returned with a tall, very thin policeman and the blond policewoman. “We will do our best to speed up this process. Senator Keyes, I will interview you. Sergeant Lyby will interview Senator Frye, and Sergeant Tjølhelm will interview Mr. Rodney Craig.”

  Four little, three little, two little Indians. Dinah watched the parade move off down the hall and proffered her fellow non-selectee an uneasy smile. “Well, Lee, it looks like they’re saving us for last.”

  He came back to the table and sat down. “Do you know anything about the system over here? Can they keep us from leaving?”

  “They can’t hold the senators for long without starting a war. I’m not sure how they’ll treat a low-level technical assistant and a pair of company bodyguards.”

  “Yeah. I’ve been thinking about that. With Sheridan raising hell about me losing his wife, like I was in on kidnapping her or something, things could get sticky. The Norwegians may try to hold me ‘til she’s found.”

  Once again, Dinah wondered if the guards had recording devices in their poc
kets or the room was bugged. If it was and if she could get Lee talking, she could maybe fill in some of the blanks inThor’s investigation. “Jake Mahler has clout with the Norwegian government. He’ll make certain that you and Rod leave when he leaves.”

  “He has clout with the ag minister, that Dybdahl clown. I figure he’s got no say in a missing person case.”

  “Did you and Erika talk at all while you were guarding her?”

  “Not really. She was all the time asking about her husband. Was he still in the hotel, when would he be back, that kind of thing.”

  “Did she seem afraid of him?”

  “No. It was more like she was champing at the bit to tell him something and he was avoiding her.”

  “And she didn’t say anything to suggest where she might have gone?”

  “If she had, I wouldn’t be keeping it a secret. The airport’s closed. There’s no trains, no buses. She could’ve skied or dogsledded or snowmobiled to that Russian town, Barentsburg. If not, she’s still somewhere in Longyearbyen. If she’d call the police and tell them she was safe in the arms of her boyfriend, I’d be off the hook.”

  Dinah tried not to sound accusatory. “There is the problem of Valerie Ives’ murder.”

  “That’s nothing to do with me.”

  “Even so, the police will probably ask what you and she were arguing about in the lobby this morning.”

  “She was ragging on me about the e-mail Ramberg found in Jorgen’s room. She said it had been slipped into one of her files and then stolen. I told her I didn’t know anything about it.”

  “Did she say when it was stolen?”

  “No.”

  Dinah reconstructed the timeline. The e-mail had showed up in Valerie’s e-mail on the day of the vault tour. She had shown it to Sheridan and probably to Mahler. That was obviously the “note” she and Mahler were whispering about on the drive back from the vault. Mahler had said he didn’t buy it and Valerie had replied that somebody was playing them. She must have finally deduced that it wasn’t Dinah and when she confronted the real culprit, he killed her.

  Dinah tried again not to sound accusatory. “What were you and Rod looking for in Valerie’s room this morning?”

  “All I know, Mahler had us looking for anything with the words Africa or Myzandia.”

  Sergeant Lyby appeared at the door and called Dinah’s name. So Thor had recused himself. Fear mingled with disappointment. She got up, squared her shoulders, and followed her interrogator down the hall. Sergeant Lyby had her hand on the door when Thor came loping down the hall.

  “They’ve found her. Adjourn the interviews. Let’s go.”

  Sergeant Lyby gave Dinah a narrow-eyed, just-you-wait look and loped off after him. In Longyearbyen, it wasn’t necessary to warn the suspects not to leave town.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The lobby was jammed. A knot of people stood in a ragged line in front of the reception desk, waiting to check in. They were laughing and gabbing with one another and futzing with their hotel-issue clogs. Their suitcases and duffel bags lay scattered carelessly across the floor, making walking a hazard. Dinah asked a woman in a fur hat near the back of the line where they’d come from.

  “London. We’ve flown in for New Year’s Eve.”

  “The airport is open?”

  “I should jolly well hope so by now. We thought we’d have to camp out in Heathrow through the holiday and lose our hotel deposit, but it’s all come right. The party’s already begun.”

  This was evidenced by a well-irrigated gentleman in a Dickens top hat and green felt vest passing up and down the line pouring gin into outstretched plastic cups.

  Dinah maneuvered her way through the crowd to the elevators and pushed the up button. The relief in Thor’s voice when he said, “They’ve found her” could mean only one thing. They’d found Erika and she was alive. Maybe she’d tried to book a commercial flight at the airport or, as Lee suggested, gone overland by dogsled to Barentsburg. Dinah hoped that Norris Frye was wrong about Erika being a murderess, although at this point she wouldn’t bet on the innocence of anyone.

  “I hear you’re the one who found the lawyer’s body.”

  She jumped. “Brander, you frightened me.”

  “Stabbed? Strangled? What was she wearing?”

  “I’m not going to give you that information.”

  “I didn’t really think you would, but I’ve got another story. Get your coat and I’ll show you something.”

  “I’m not going anywhere. You shouldn’t either. They’ve found Erika.” She put on the brakes. “Did you know…?”

  “Everybody knows. I’ve already wired the story to Dagbladet.”

  “Well, then, you should lurk about here in the lobby until they bring her back. Maybe she’ll give you an exclusive.”

  Brander grinned. “They only think they’ve found her.” The elevator door opened. He propelled Dinah inside, walked in behind her, and pushed the button for the second floor.

  “What do you mean they only think they’ve found her?”

  “Somebody gave them a, what do you Americans call it? A bum steer.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “As I told you once before, it’s my business to know things.”

  “Did you call in a phony tip?”

  He winked a naughty-boy wink.

  “Thor Ramberg will nail your hide to the jailhouse wall.”

  “He doesn’t know where the tip came from and he won’t unless you tell him.”

  The elevator stopped. They got out and he propelled her toward her room. “You’re in two-eighteen, right?”

  “Why,” she asked, “would you do something so perverse? And illegal?”

  “I needed to pry you loose for a while.”

  “Well, you can’t. I’m going to lock myself in my room until the police call me to be interviewed.”

  “They’ve gone to Barentsburg. They’ll be gone for hours. Let’s go in your room and I’ll explain.”

  “You’re not setting a foot inside my room.” She noticed that he hadn’t removed his boots. “Anything you have to say to me, you can say it right here in the hall.”

  “I think I know where Erika is. All I want is a chance to speak with her before the police and her husband get to her and she’s never seen or heard from again.”

  “How could you know where she is?”

  “I don’t know. I think I know. Fata Morgana once put on a Christmas concert in Longyearbyen. It was televised—lots of glitz and glamor with the northern lights as a backdrop. The group stayed at an old Victorian hotel on the peninsula by Adventifjorden, not far from the airport. The coal baron John Longyear and his cronies used to host parties there during the summer. The hotel is dilapidated now, but maybe Erika holds fond memories. It’s worth a try.”

  “Brander, if you think that’s where she is, why don’t you go and speak to her by yourself? Why do you need me?”

  “She might open the door to you.”

  Dinah weighed the pros and cons. In the pro column, she could verify that Erika was safe and had eloped of her own free will. On the con side, Thor and everybody else would assume she’d known where Erika was from the get-go and had lied about it. She could be jailed for obstructing a police investigation or worse, participating in Erika’s kidnapping. But on the pro side, Erika could solve the mystery of the stolen note left in Maks’ room and perhaps shed light on Eftevang’s murder. A major con, Erika and Maks could turn out to be the murderers and they wouldn’t take kindly to being tracked to their lair by a sleazy journalist and the Nosy Parker who’d ruined her parka and read her mail.

  Aagaard frisked himself, apparently searching for his cigarettes. “Will you come?”

  “How do I know you didn’t kill Eftevang and Valerie,
too? How do I know you didn’t shoot me and now you’re trying to entice me out of the hotel to finish the job?”

  He looked at her bandaged arm as if it had suddenly dropped out of the sky. “When did that happen?”

  “Yesterday.” In fact, she hardly knew what time it was any more. It had been one long, continuous night since the moment she landed at Svalbard. “I take it that’s your denial?”

  “I didn’t shoot you. I didn’t kill anybody.” He found a cigarette and lit up in defiance of hotel rules, city ordinance, and national policy. “I won’t say a homicide doesn’t make great copy because it does and, save for that monster who slaughtered all those teenage children of the Labor Party last year, there are damn few homicides in Norway to write about. But I like to skewer my victims alive. In forty point bold.”

  He was insufferable, but plausible. And no one had ever accused her of an excess of caution. She said, “I’ll get my coat.”

  She left him in the hallway and went into her room. Erika’s parka was still in Thor’s trunk or being analyzed in a lab somewhere, so it was the flimsy wool pea jacket or nothing. She swaddled herself in every piece of clothing she had and topped it with the pea jacket. In a nod to prudence, she dashed off a note to Thor. “Have gone to the old hotel on Adventifjorden with Aagaard. He thinks Erika may be hiding out there. Dinah.”

  Thor’s refusal to face her and talk to her rankled. It didn’t matter that it was the professional thing to do or that she would do the same thing if she were the one wearing the badge. She had handled the dumbbell that brained Valerie and it was perfectly rational to chuck her into the pool of suspects. But Dinah didn’t feel especially rational. A kiss like the one the detective inspector had laid on her made rationality moot. She tore up the note and tossed it in the waste basket.

  Aagaard was waiting for her, stinking up the hall with his cigarette smoke. She stared at the torn pieces of the note as if she could divine her fortune from the pattern of the pieces. Whatever the immediate future spelled, it was lame to let punctured vanity keep her from taking a simple precaution. She rewrote the note and propped it on the dresser.