Pix rolled over and pulled the down comforter up to her chin. The other bed was empty. Damn! she thought. She’d missed a golden opportunity to find out more about Jennifer Olsen and what Miss Olsen thought about the tour. She looked at the clock. It was past eight. In her family, anything past 6:30 meant you were ill or incredibly deca
dent. Fortunately, Pix had married a man who set her straight on early rising, but she was traveling with her mother at the moment. She jumped out of bed, skipped a shower, threw on some clothes, and went across the hall. Her mother opened the door, fully dressed, and, from the strong scent of Neutrogena lotion that filled the air, fully showered.
“You must have been very tired, dear,” she said in a nottoo-accusatory voice. “Shall we have breakfast?”
Pix started to apologize, then remembered how many exhausting things she’d done in the last twenty-four hours, like fly across the ocean, travel across the vidda, and provide refuge in the middle of the night. She told her mother all about Jennifer as they went to the dining room.
“Do you think this man could have any possible connection to Erik’s death and Kari’s disappearance?” Ursula asked.
“Not really, but something out of the ordinary has already happened on this tour and we need to keep track of any other unusual events.”
There is nothing quite like a Norwegian breakfast—the smørgåsbord laden with everything Pix liked to eat best: fruit compotes and pitchers of heavy cream; a cheese board; homemade breads and rolls; knakkebrød, thick, crisp whole-wheat crackers; flatbrød, paper-thin crackers; wienerbrød, Danish pastries; hot and cold cereals; a platter of gravlaks, fresh-cured salmon and smoked salmon; lever-postei, a kind of liver pâté; bowls of boiled eggs, hard and soft; sliced meats; and herring. Herring in cream sauce, herring in mustard sauce, herring in dill sauce, herring with onions and peppercorns. Herring, the “silver of the sea.” The Norwegians largely survived on herring during the German occupation, drying, pickling, smoking, frying, and boiling it. Pix watched as an elderly group, speaking Norwegian, piled their plates high. One would have thought this generation would never want to see a herring again, but the opposite was true. They must feel grateful, she thought. Herring do run in cycles, returning
each winter like clockwork for years—during which time, an old law stated, no lawsuits may be conducted, and everyone should fish—then the fish inexplicably disappear for twenty or thirty years. The group was laughing heartily. The herring hadn’t deserted them and they were alive.
A young waitress was making heart-shaped waffles, vafler, and the smell was intoxicating. Norwegians eat vafler with coffee and other cakes in the afternoon and thought the introduction of them to the breakfast menu—for the tour-ists—very funny. Pix noticed a tiny bottle of maple syrup. She didn’t care when she ate them, but she would stick to the traditional way—a little butter and raspberry preserves.
Their plates laden, Ursula and Pix looked about the room for the Scandie Sights flags. Most of the tables were filled, but they spotted places at a table for four. Two women of a certain age were already there, chatting away. Every once in a while, one would nibble a corner of a pastry or take a sip of coffee.
“May we join you?” Pix asked.
“Yes,” said one. “I’m afraid my English is very poor, but please come.” She was French. As Pix searched her mind for the remnants of Madame Durand’s earnest efforts, grades seven through twelve, Ursula fluently introduced herself and her tongue-tied daughter, then proceeded to elicit the following information. The women lived outside Paris, were cousins, and took a trip together every year to break the routine. “We escape our husbands,” the woman who had spoken before added in English for Pix’s benefit. Her name was Sophie and Valerie was her cousine. “C’est bizarre, le petit déjeuner norvégien,” Valerie contributed to the conversation, fork poised above a fish cake. Pix had never thought of these splendid repasts as bizarre, but if one was used to a croissant and café au lait, this spread would definitely appear strange.
Carl strolled by. He and Jan wore matching Norwegian sweaters each day, it seemed. Jan’s had a few pulls, but
Carl’s looked like new. Maybe he hadn’t worked for the tour
group that long. Maybe he was neater.
“How is everything, ladies?”
Mouths full, they all nodded. Pix found her voice first. “Do you know anything more about what happened last night?”
Carl gave a worried glance at the Frenchwomen. Obviously, Jennifer Olsen’s adventure was not being posted with the day’s events.
“No, nothing. But all’s well that ends well,” he said brightly and moved on.
One of your staff dead, one missing, and an intruder in the night. Pix did not think that all was well.
She tuned back in to the table conversation. Mother must have been listening to her French tapes again while she rode her Exercycle, Pix thought.
“They knew the tour would be in English, but they didn’t think they needed to understand everything. It’s all nature, and who needs words for that?” Ursula laughed. The cousins were smiling agreement. From what Pix knew of the French, she was sure the two believed that compared to their own history, art, and culture, the Norwegians were savages, so if they missed what year a particular stave church was built in, it would be no great loss.
After a second cup of coffee, Pix left her mother to her new friends and went back to the room to shower. But first she stepped out onto her own balcony. The door was equipped with a heavy drape to keep the light out, and since it had been partially drawn, she hadn’t realized the balcony was there. It was furnished with two chairs and a small table. Pix peered over the edge. It was an easy climb up or down to the ground—or to Jennifer’s room. The balconies were joined together. Tour groups were easy targets for thieves, even in Norway, and Pix was inclined to think that was all there was to it.
Feeling greatly refreshed by the shower, Pix got her things together, placing her bag outside the door as they had been instructed. Her mother’s was already out and
there was no answer to her knock. She decided to go down to the lobby and see if Ursula was there or if she might have decided to take a walk.
A bright voice greeted her as she entered the elevator. “I see you’re another of the Scandie Sights group.”
“Why yes, I am.” Pix wondered how the woman knew.
“I saw you last night. Is that your mother with you? I told my husband it must be. You’re like two peas in a pod. I’m Carol Peterson, from Duluth. In Minnesota. My husband, Roy, is with me and my son, Roy junior, and his new bride, Lynette. Lynette’s not Norwegian, probably not a drop of Scandinavian blood in her body, but we love her anyway, and she wanted to take her honeymoon here to get to know our roots just as much as Roy junior did.”
The elevator doors opened. They stepped out into the lobby and Carol finally came up for a breath. Pix knew she was expected to make a comment, and the one running through her head—something like wouldn’t Lynette have rather had root canal work than come to Norway with her in-laws on her honeymoon—was not appropriate. She settled for a straightforward introduction.
“I’m Pix Miller, and yes, I am traveling with my mother, Ursula Rowe. We’re from Aleford, Massachusetts.”
“Massachusetts, now that is a coincidence. Roy was there for a convention in 1985. It was in Boston. That’s the capital, right?”
“Yes, it is.”
“I watch Jeopardy! a lot. I know all the state capitals. Everyone tells me I ought to go on, but I’d be too nervous, and besides, I don’t think it’s fair. Those buzzer things don’t always seem to work right to me.”
“Have you been with the tour since Copenhagen?” Pix was pretty sure she hadn’t seen the name Peterson among the new arrivals, and the woman was a gift, a veritable font of information.
“Oh, yes, and it’s been a dream come true. We’re going to Kristiansand at the end of the tour. I have some cousins there I’ve never met. We wanted to st
ay in a hotel, but they just wouldn’t hear of it.”
Pix interrupted. It was close to 10:30 and she didn’t want another chance to slip by. The buses would board at eleven.
“One of the people at our table last night was telling us about some trouble. That one of the staff drowned. It must have been horrible.”
“Well, we didn’t see him drown”—Carol Peterson was clearly of the “out of sight, out of mind” school—“and none of us really knew him.” She paused, but Pix was sure she’d go on. There was empty air to fill. “The young people who took their place are much, much better. More efficient and, believe me, much nicer.” She punctuated the last comment with an extremely knowing look.
“Them? I thought it was just one person.”
“He had this girlfriend. She was working on the tour, too. They slipped off to get married, which, I told Lynette, was very irresponsible, because if you elope, you’re always sorry later. No gown and no presents. Oh, maybe a few, but nothing good.”
“So, you thought it was irresponsible of them?” Pix tried to get her back on track, prying her away from place settings and a lifetime supply of Tupperware.
“Of course it was! To leave us all in the lurch like that. Why, Jan and Carl couldn’t manage all the bags, and we got delayed while they tried to find out what happened to them, so we missed dinner in Bergen the first night!”
Pix tried to appear sympathetic, but it was hard. Very hard.
“You said the new people are nicer?”
“The boy was all right, although he seemed a little moody. I think when you’re working on a tour like this, you should at least try to look cheerful. But the girl was a witch, if you know what I mean.” Another look.
Pix did know and she was glad her mother wasn’t there. All restraint might have vanished and Ursula could very well have clocked Carol Peterson one.
“Oh dear. It sounds as if you had a problem with her.”
“I’ll say I did. First off, we had this poky little room in the hotel in Copenhagen—the staff hands out the keys—and she wouldn’t change it.”
“Maybe all the keys had been given out,” Pix said before she could stop herself. She wanted information and that meant not interrupting the silly woman’s tirade, and certainly not sympathizing with Kari. “Although,” she added quickly, “they can usually do something.”
“Exactly!” Carol said triumphantly. “We did get switched, but I had to go over her head, and after that she really had it in for me. Every time I asked her to do something, she either took her sweet time or pretended not to hear me. She knew what I’d said, too, because she heard me telling Carl and Jan about her. I thought they should know—for the good of the tour.”
The greater good, Pix thought dismally. Lord preserve us from all the things large and small resulting from this particular rationalization. She asked another question.
“How did you hear that the boy had drowned?”
“Jan told everyone and the police came. We were in Bergen. They wanted to know if anyone had seen anything. The girl has disappeared—or her body hasn’t turned up yet. I think they had a fight and she pushed him in, then realized what she’d done and jumped after him. We know they’d been fighting. Helene Feld saw them when she went to get something to eat.”
Bingo. Now Pix knew who had been the last to see them. She felt a warm—but brief—rush of gratitude toward Carol Peterson.
“There you are, dear.” It was Ursula. Pix made the introductions, heard again what a small world it was, Roy senior having been to Boston in 1985, and vowed to stand back until she saw which bus the Peterson clan boarded.
Carol was the type who asked questions. Lots of questions.
Three
The Petersons got on one bus and Pix steered Ursula onto the other. Jan was standing in the aisle at the front with a microphone.
“Now we are on our way to the famous Stalheim Hotel, making one stop for a ‘photo opportunity’ and time to eat our box lunches either on or off the bus, as you choose. Do I have any German-speaking people aboard?” He repeated the request in German. No one answered. “This is advertised as a bilingual tour, but so far, I have not had to use both languages.”
Pix looked at the itinerary sheet. The bus trip would take them through a “wonderland of waterfalls and mountains,” after which they would arrive at the hotel, “famous for its spectacular location and folk museum.” After dinner, there would be a “program of traditional Norwegian folk dancing and music performed in native costume.” The tour did not leave one at a loss for things to do. What with admiring the view, touring the museum, eating, and then clapping along—or whatever one did to the sounds of a Hardanger fiddle—it could be a very late night indeed. Pix sighed. At least Jan wasn’t making a lot of inane comments, and the scenery was breathtaking. The waterfalls cascaded down the mountains in one long, sheer teardrop. They were passing through a beautiful densely
wooded forest now and Jan picked up the microphone, resuming his position in the aisle.
“During the war, the Germans literally blew up Voss, and to this day, no one will buy wood cut from around here, because no factory will cut it. There are still so many bullets and pieces of metal embedded in the trees that it would break the machinery. Soon we will be coming to Tvindenfossen, a nice waterfall, and you can all take some pictures.”
Ursula raised her eyebrows at her daughter. “Now we know why Jan wanted to be sure there weren’t any Germans on board. Whenever I’m in Norway, I always feel as if the war ended only a short time ago. The Occupation was a terrible time.”
The bus was stopping.
“Do you want to walk up to the foss?” Pix asked.
“I think I’ll look at it from the parking lot and eat whatever this is at one of those picnic tables. You go and take a picture.”
Pix had brought her camera to Norway as part of the disguise and also in case she needed to record something. She got out, following the rest of the herd up a well-worn path to look at the falls. They were not so dramatic as the one she remembered from Flåm, but steeper, starting far up in the mountains. She waited until almost everyone had gone to eat their lunches, so she could get a shot without people posing in front. Jennifer Olsen had apparently had the same idea and they walked back down together.
“Thank you so much for last night. I know I would have been fine in my room, but I was feeling a little shook.”
In the light of day, Jennifer looked much less exotic than she did at night. She was wearing jeans, running shoes, a turtleneck, and a sweatshirt. The sweatshirt had NO PAIN, NO GAIN in script letters across the front.
“Well, you won’t have to worry about anything happening tonight,” Pix said. “The odds of something like that
occurring twice in a row, or even in a year, must be infinitesimal in Norway.”
“True. The funny thing is, I’m always looking over my shoulder at home. I live in Manhattan, but, knock wood, nothing has ever happened. I come here and…Well, I’m just going to put it out of my head. I don’t want to spoil the rest of the trip with negative thoughts. It’s been wonderful.”
Pix wished she could shelve her negative thoughts. Even the beauty of Norway couldn’t blot out the image of Erik’s death and Kari’s disappearance. She wasn’t here for pleasure and she slowed her pace. Jennifer, traveling alone, might have observed more than, say, Carol Peterson.
“But I understood there was trouble earlier in the trip—a staff problem?”
Jennifer stopped in the middle of the path. Her face darkened. “It was horrible. All some people could think about when someone was dead was having to carry their own luggage.”
“Dead?” It was easy for Pix to sound alarmed.
“We don’t really know what happened. Kari and Erik were a young couple working for Scandie Sights—doing what Anders and Sonja do now. They ran away to get married and somehow he was swept into a river and drowned. Her body hasn’t been found yet.” Jennifer sounded very sure that Kar
i had drowned, too. Pix felt her stomach turn. Could it be just that? The two of them running off and then a terrible accident? But what about Kari’s last words to Marit, the words that had been interrupted?
“Such a tragedy,” she said inadequately.
“Yes, life’s a bitch,” replied Jennifer, walking rapidly now, as if she feared all the food would be gone. Pix felt a little guilty as she sat down next to her mother and opened the box lunch. So much for helping Jennifer avoid negative thoughts.
“You have seen Tvindenfossen and now we have the Tvinde River.” On the way again, Jan had resumed his
role, after eating his lunch alone. “It’s a very good salmon river, and in Norway, anyone can fish anywhere—even private property is open to the public—but you need to ask and maybe pay a small fee, about ten kroner. There’re plenty of places to fish for everyone without overcrowding. Norway has so many lakes that we figure there are about two fishermen for each one. We fish all year long, and Lake Vangsvatnet, the one we just left in Voss, is the site of a large ice-fishing festival every winter. Not for people with thin skins.” Somehow Jan managed to make all this sound unrehearsed. A kind of stream of consciousness, like the waters rushing past them outside. He gazed out the window, thought of something, and spoke. “We have a legend about the Tvinde River, too. If you drink its water every day of your life, you’ll never get old. It’s just a legend, of course.” He sounded disappointed.
“No thank you,” Ursula announced firmly. “One of the pleasures of being old is that you don’t have to be young again, especially a teenager.”
Pix and her friend Faith tended to think that their lives were destined to be an endless repetition of junior high school, so this was good news, but Pix did wonder what her mother was referring to. She’d always imagined her mother’s adolescent years as happy times—picnics in the countryside, rowing on the river. She realized that whatever Ursula might be recalling was obviously not in the family photograph albums.
The Body in the Fjord ff-8 Page 6