“I’m assuming the woman in these pictures isn’t your mom.”
Elisa wrapped her arms around herself. She suddenly felt very cold. She wanted to close her eyes and not see the pictures, but even that wouldn’t have helped. They were already burned deep into her brain and would be playing on an internal movie screen that night when she closed her eyes and tried to sleep.
How could Daddy do this to her? And to her mom?
Elisa wasn’t stupid. For a long time, she had known her parents’ relationship wasn’t happy in a romantic sense and that they were mostly still together out of habit and convenience. Still, it felt inconceivable to think that Daddy had cheated on her mom. Daddy wasn’t like that. Daddy was honest and honorable and dependable. Daddy was the kind of man who got divorced first before starting anything new. Actually, Elisa hadn’t been as sure about her mom. Elisa wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that her mom didn’t always spend her nights alone when she was traveling for work. More than plausible, she thought, it was probable.
But Daddy. With a younger woman, barely older than Elisa herself. The whole idea made her sick. Even worse than the relationship was the secrecy and the lying. If it was even a real relationship. It could just be—but why would Daddy have kept the pictures on his computer then? They had to mean something because he wanted to be able to look at them again.
“Maybe . . .”
Elisa heard Lumikki’s voice as if in a dream. What if this was all a dream and she could wake up . . . right . . . now!
The door flew open, and Tuukka and Kasper tumbled in.
“Important girl talk going on in here? Or has our computer wiz actually found something? Woo-hoo.”
Lumikki felt awkward having Elisa, Kasper, and Tuukka staring over her shoulder at the pictures. The worst thing about it was being able to sense Elisa’s embarrassment without even turning around.
“Maybe she’s just . . . or I mean, maybe Daddy’s just . . .” Elisa said, trying desperately to articulate any sort of explanation.
“Let’s face it,” Kasper said. “Your dad is banging some young chick.”
All of their thoughts spoken aloud. Perhaps not word for word, but the bottom line was the same.
“There could be some other explanation,” Elisa said feebly.
Lumikki could hear from her voice that Elisa knew Kasper was right.
“I’d bet anything this has something to do with the money,” Tuukka said. “Two secrets like this at once can’t be a coincidence.”
“But how?” Elisa asked.
“Doesn’t she look a little bit Russian?” Kasper asked. “Maybe she’s a who—sorry, I mean prostitute. Maybe your dad is mixed up in some kind of sex business.”
Elisa shook her head. Looking at her now, Lumikki realized the girl was on the verge of tears.
“Or maybe—” Tuukka was going to take a stab at speculating now.
But just then, the computer chimed to signal the arrival of a new e-mail. Lumikki had left the anonymous account open just in case something of interest happened to come in.
Bull’s-eye.
The sender was using an anonymous account too. The handle, “Beatifulrose,” and a top-level domain name didn’t reveal much. Lumikki read the message out loud. It was written in English.
My love,
I had to create another e-mail address. Just to be careful. Polar Bear is having a party on Friday. Wants you to be there. And so do I. There will be a black car picking you up at 8 p.m. Because the theme is fairy tales and because I know what you like, I’m going as the Snow Queen. I’ve got something important to tell you.
Kisses, N
P.S. Please delete this message right after reading as always. We have to be extra careful.
Tuukka, Kasper, and Elisa looked at each other.
“What the hell does that mean?” Elisa asked.
“Polar Bear, Polar Bear . . .” Kasper repeated. “Oh my God. Polar Bear. Your dad just got invited to one of Polar Bear’s parties.”
“What? Whose party?”
“Polar Bear’s!” Kasper almost yelled. “He’s a legend. I mean, I don’t know much more than that he’s some kind of super big shot who like everyone respects. I’ve heard he runs all kinds of different legal and illegal businesses, and basically no one has ever seen him. The rumors about his parties are totally wild. Apparently, he has some kind of crazy mansion or castle where he hosts these off-the-hook blowouts. Everybody goes. I mean everybody who’s like rich and important.”
“What is this Polar Bear guy’s real name?” Lumikki asked.
Kasper looked at her in amusement.
“How should I know? You’d have to be a serious insider to know something like that.”
“So he’s like a mob boss or something?” Elisa had instinctively lowered her voice.
Kasper spread his arms.
“Well, I doubt he’d want the cops to know about all his businesses. I mean, what do I know? But he’s so rich and crafty that he never gets caught. He never gets his own hands dirty.”
“How do you know about all this?” Tuukka asked.
A satisfied smile appeared on Kasper’s lips.
Lumikki could see that Kasper thought he was way slicker than the rest of them.
“I have my sources. When you spend time on the street, you hear things. And don’t bother asking any more. I get you guys pills, and I get you information. That’s all you need to know.”
While the others were talking, Lumikki copied the e-mail down word for word on a slip of paper and shoved it in her pants pocket.
“Be that as it may, we have to trash this e-mail,” she said. “Unfortunately, it says that it’s been opened once already now, so your dad will know someone’s been in his account.”
Lumikki prepared to delete the message.
Terho Väisänen’s fingers were frozen, even though his gloves were supposed to be Windstopper fabric with all kinds of insulating layers. He tried to warm up his joints enough to get the key into the front door lock.
He thought back on the previous December when it was only a couple of degrees below freezing, with snow falling so gently you almost didn’t notice it. He had been standing with Natalia by a sculpture in Tampella. The sculpture radiated a blue light that made Natalia’s face look ethereal.
They had just gone for coffee. The new housing development on the river was relatively safe. No one that he knew lived there. Neither his wife nor Elisa had any reason to visit. Only people who lived in the area should be around, since it wasn’t on the way to anywhere else. There weren’t any special stores or restaurants that would inspire people to go out of their way. The coffee shop was just barely scraping by on the euros that local residents brought in. In Tampella, they dared to appear in public together. Even though there were still risks.
Sometimes you had to take a risk. And besides, the fear of getting caught added to the thrill. Of course, Terho had a cover story in case a friend or a friend of a friend happened to see them together. He could always point to his work, intelligence gathering, the importance of confidentiality and all that. He could make them think that Natalia was giving him information, but that he couldn’t reveal anything more than that. Hush-hush. Terho was relieved he hadn’t had to use his cover story yet.
Natalia had forgotten her gloves. She blew on her small hands. Terho took them between his own to warm them up. Natalia smiled. Snowflakes stuck to her hair, reflecting the blue light of the statue. Natalia was wearing a white coat and white boots. She looked more beautiful than she ever had before.
“My snow queen,” Terho breathed into her ear.
Suddenly, he was filled with an intense desire to warm Natalia all over, to press his burning palms against her cool skin, to melt every flake of snow.
“Let’s go,” he said hoarsely and pulled Natalia along, quickening his steps. In five minutes, they were at the reception desk of Hotel Tammer. They got a room. He made a quick call to his wife, informing her that he w
ould be working overtime late into the night. Then he turned back to Natalia, who didn’t look so much like a fairy-tale creature anymore in the warm yellow light of the hotel room. That didn’t matter, though. The mental image had already created the desire. Pulling Natalia against him, he closed his eyes.
Terho Väisänen returned to the present, clumsy fingers still fighting with his key, and uttered a string of curses.
Lumikki heard the sounds first.
In a hushed voice, she said, “Someone’s coming.”
Elisa jumped.
“The men who chased you! The killers!”
Lumikki restrained her desire to slap her hand over Elisa’s mouth. Did she really have such an underdeveloped sense of self-preservation? Did living in a pink-and-black room pickle your brain and turn your thoughts to mush?
“Let’s just stay calm and keep quiet. Obviously, whoever it is has a key. I’m guessing it’s your dad. The important thing is that we don’t let him know we were in here by making too much noise.”
As she spoke, Lumikki calmly deleted the e-mail, logged out of the account, closed the secret picture folder and browser window, and turned off the machine. To Lumikki, it felt like each step took an agonizingly long time. In reality, of course, it all happened in a matter of seconds.
Then again, it also only took a few seconds for the person at the door to get the key into the lock and click it open.
“Go. Upstairs.”
Lumikki issued her command as quietly as possible. It was enough to convince Elisa, Tuukka, and Kasper, who slipped out of the study and rushed to the stairs. They probably thought they were being quiet, but to Lumikki, their exit sounded like a herd of wildebeests who had just heard a lion roar.
Turn off already. Turn off.
The computer stayed stuck at the “Shutting down . . .” screen for too long. Lumikki guessed that the machine had the same problem her own laptop did, and occasionally just refused to power down for no particular reason.
She heard the door open. Fortunately, the front door did not have a direct line of sight to the office. Someone large stepped into the house. A man.
Lumikki controlled her breath, concentrating on keeping her heart rate in check. Then she firmly pressed the power button and held it down. The next time it booted up, the machine might complain about not being shut down properly, which could arouse Elisa’s father’s suspicion, but right now, taking that risk was her only option. Most likely, he would act just like anyone else and wonder for two seconds about why the machine had crashed, then shrug and start thinking about buying a new one soon.
Turn off already.
The screen went black.
“Elisa! I decided to come home for lunch! I’ll make something for us,” he shouted up the stairs.
Good. Lumikki had been right.
Quietly, she hid behind the office door, hoping fervently that Elisa’s dad wouldn’t come in there first.
She could hear him taking off his cold weather clothes. Then his steps approached the office.
Keep walking.
He was already moving past the office into the kitchen, but then changed his mind and stepped into the room. Lumikki held her breath. She was flat. She was odorless. She did not exist.
Don’t sit down. Lumikki knew that the chair would still be warm.
Elisa’s dad did not sit. Standing at the desk, he sorted the mail. Lumikki still held her breath. She knew she could hold her breath calmly for at least two minutes. Elisa’s dad tossed a couple of envelopes, presumably bills, toward the back corner of the desk. Then he headed back out to the kitchen.
“What do you want? Should I make some pasta? Or maybe that curried chicken soup you like? I really need something hot after freezing my butt off outside.”
Lumikki heard him open the refrigerator door.
Now. Stepping out from behind the door, she took two steps to build up speed and then slid silently in her socks across the almost unnaturally smooth hardwood floor over to the stairs. Then she hurried up as quietly as the lion stalking that herd of wildebeest. She stepped into Elisa’s room so inconspicuously that she succeeded in startling the trio waiting inside.
“God, you almost gave me a heart attack,” Elisa whispered. “Now get in the closet.”
“Why?”
Lumikki didn’t understand Elisa’s train of thought. Tuukka and Kasper were happily sprawled on the couch without any intention of hiding.
Heavy steps approached up the stairs.
“I’ll explain later,” Elisa hissed, pushing Lumikki into the walk-in closet and quickly shutting the door.
“Do you have a friend over?” Elisa’s dad asked from the top of the stairs.
“Yeah. Tuukka and Kasper came to keep me company,” Elisa answered in an overly cheerful voice that anyone could tell was fake from a mile away.
“Weren’t you supposed to have a migraine?” he asked suspiciously. “And aren’t you boys supposed to be in school?”
“Oh, it just went away,” Elisa said.
“Math class was canceled ’cause the teacher’s sick,” Tuukka answered.
Lumikki watched through a crack in the door as Elisa’s dad looked over the threesome. He had short blond hair and an upper body that suggested time spent in the weight room. The closet was dark but roomy. It smelled of girl. Lumikki’s closet never could have smelled like that.
She was hiding again. Trying not to be seen.
Lumikki closed her eyes.
You can’t run. We’ll always find you. And when we find you, we’re gonna to kill you.
Kill.
You.
A midsummer pole stretching high into the sky, festooned with garlands of flowers and ribbons and leaves. Balloons, balloons, and more balloons, some escaping into the blue. The most beautiful evening of the year in the Åland Islands, already turning to night but still as bright as day. All of Dad’s family there. The scents of summer, the distant screeching of gulls, the twittering of the swallows. Lumikki wearing a white dress and a garland of dandelions Mom made. She was singing Astrid Lindgren’s “Ida’s Summer Song.” She didn’t have a beautiful voice, and she wasn’t used to speaking Swedish in front of people, but that didn’t matter.
Cousin Emma, one year older, suddenly stood before her. Lumikki tried to get past. She wanted to go see the midsummer pole. She wanted a balloon too, the ones Uncle Erik was filling with helium and passing out to the kids. A red one. Or blue. Not yellow under any circumstances. Maybe red would be best.
“Want to play?” Cousin Emma asked in Swedish. Lumikki shrugged.
“How about we play that you’re my slave and you have to do everything I say?”
Lumikki shook her head.
“Well then, I could be the queen and you could be my horse.”
“No,” Lumikki said.
“You have to. I get to choose because we live here and I’m older.”
Lumikki started to cry.
“No,” she said again.
Just then, Auntie Anna, Cousin Emma’s mother, came up with Lumikki’s mom.
“Lumikki doesn’t want to play with me. She just says no to everything I suggest,” Emma whined to her mother. “She isn’t even close to as fun as—”
“Shh . . .” Auntie Anna stroked Emma’s blond hair. “Maybe Lumikki is a little shy,” she suggested. “Come on, let’s go get you a balloon.”
Auntie Anna took Emma by the hand. After a few steps, Emma turned back and stuck her tongue out at Lumikki. Auntie Anna and Mom didn’t notice. Mom was looking out at the sea. It looked as though the salty wind was making her eyes water. Wiping them with the back of her hand, she sighed and, in Finnish, said to Lumikki, “It isn’t good to always say no. If you say yes a little more often, you could make some friends.”
Friends? Did Lumikki want friends? Did that mean she had to do whatever people wanted?
The next line of the song didn’t want to come out of Lumikki’s mouth anymore.
“No.”
Elisa looked at her with her big eyes. The Bambi-just-lost-his-mother look didn’t work on Lumikki, though.
“But none of the rest of us can,” Tuukka tried to argue. “You’re the only one Elisa’s dad hasn’t ever seen before.”
“Playing detective might have been fun in elementary school, but this isn’t a game.”
Lumikki opened the balcony door and let the frigid air rush into Elisa’s room. She had been forced to spend nearly half an hour in the saccharine-smelling closet while Elisa and the boys enjoyed themselves downstairs eating the chicken soup her dad had made. Finally, Elisa’s father had gone back to work.
Lumikki drew fresh air into her lungs. It didn’t matter that it stung.
“But it might be the only way we’ll ever find out what’s going on,” Kasper said, joining in the coaxing.
“Or maybe we should stop this fooling around and go talk to the police,” Lumikki said.
No, no, no. Because of the party. Because of the drugs. Because of the break-in at the school. Because of the money. Because Elisa’s dad was a cop and who was going to believe them unless they had more information, more than a few pictures and a deleted e-mail?
“Ditching school day after day might not matter to you guys, but I’m not interested in flunking out.”
Determined, Lumikki set off downstairs. Elisa, Tuukka, and Kasper followed her like puppies. All that was missing were the lolling tongues.
“All you have tomorrow is two hours of physics and two hours of PE,” Elisa said. “And you’re not anywhere close to missing too many classes in either of them.”
Lumikki glanced at Elisa. Had she checked on her class schedule and absences? Pretty smart move. Surprisingly smart.
“If you do this one more thing, I swear I won’t bother you anymore.”
Elisa looked sincere.
Lumikki didn’t give any sign that she was tempted, either by the idea that they wouldn’t bother her anymore or by the actual task. She knew she would be good at it. She was good at being invisible, inconspicuous, nonexistent.
As Red as Blood (The Snow White Trilogy) Page 8