“Silly kitty, I’m not laughing at you. And I wouldn’t wear a veil anyway. Antti doesn’t even belong to the church. Maybe the courthouse and regular clothes will do…”
I drove the back roads to my parents’ lakeside cabin, avoiding the center of town. I was deliberately avoiding driving past the police station, knowing the temptation to stop in hopes of getting new information was too great. Driving down the dirt roads, I pretended I was Mika Häkkinen going for a Formula One victory in Monaco. The cows applauded as I drifted the rear end of the Russian Lada station wagon, spraying gravel into the fields.
As I was making the final turn, I suddenly realized we hadn’t found Meritta’s handbag. That was a bit odd. Wouldn’t you expect a woman who had so carefully painted her eyelids copper to bring something to touch up her makeup during the course of the evening? And she had to have kept her key to the Tower somewhere. Where had her purse ended up?
My parents’ cabin had no phone, so I would have to leave the mystery of the purse for the next day. I parked Uncle Pena’s Lada behind my parents’ red Opel and was barely out of the car before Saku was careening toward me.
The poor child appeared to have inherited the Kallio family snub nose, which looked especially funny on an eleven-month-old. Tousled blond hair had also started sprouting on his head. Scooping Saku up and throwing him over my shoulder, I carried him back to the sand pile where he had been playing with my father. Mom and Eeva were sitting on the garden swing.
“Where’s Jarmo?” I asked, since I didn’t see Eeva’s husband.
“He stayed in Joensuu. He had some sauna night to go to. Something about foreign guests at work. It’s nice to see you on time for once.” Eeva was knitting a tiny pale-blue cotton sweater, and my mother was crocheting lace. A hammer had always felt better in my hand than a crochet hook, although I did know how to darn socks.
“What time does Saku go to sleep?”
“Sometime around nine.”
“I should have time for a little jog, then. Should I start the sauna stove first?”
“It’s already burning. Is there any new information about Meritta’s death? Timo Antikainen already stopped by our house asking if we saw anything.”
“Yeah, since this is an unexplained death, it’s routine to question everyone who was at the party. We want to know why and when Meritta went up in the Tower.”
“Was it an accident or murder?” Eeva asked curiously.
“We still don’t know,” I said evasively.
“My sister the police hero is solving another murder,” Eeva said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “Why doesn’t anyone call me a hero for changing Saku’s diaper before I’ve had my morning coffee?”
I laughed. “I certainly would. I’m going running now, and then hopefully I can have a sauna with Saku before bedtime.”
Besides the birds, the forest road was quiet. A lone frog hopped out of my way into a ditch. After running just a mile, I again was reminded that I’d slept only four hours the night before. My legs burned, and my breathing was labored. Slowing my pace, I eventually turned back a little earlier than I had planned. Still, running was relaxing. The past twenty-four hours had contained altogether too many emotional ups and downs, and I was drained.
I dipped myself in the lake before going into the sauna. For Saku, sauna meant sitting on the floor in the largest washbasin at the cabin, splashing water all around. The hissing of the rocks when I threw water on them made him laugh. The only thing that upset him was when I wouldn’t give him a taste of my beer.
“He’s a pretty dangerous little guy,” I said to Eeva as we were drying Saku in the dressing room. He peered at us beneath the hood of his towel, his eyes already a little sleepy.
“Are you starting to want one? You should just do it. Or does Antti have something against kids?”
“It’s more about me. It changes your life so much.”
“You’re right, but once they come, you get used to the change. Actually, Saku, you might as well have your bedtime milk right now.” With that, Eeva took her son to her breast, and Saku smiled in satisfaction before latching on and becoming one with his mother. Slightly bewildered, I watched their symbiosis. The thought of another person getting food directly from my body was beyond strange.
“I hear you and Johnny were pretty hot and heavy on the dance floor last night,” Eeva said teasingly. “Mom says his wife didn’t like it one bit.”
“They’re getting a divorce. And don’t be stupid. Anyone can dance with whoever they want!” Startled by the irritation in my tone, Saku disengaged. My family seemed to think I was ready to give Antti the old heave-ho for some guy from a million years ago who might have murdered his mistress…Damn it, Johnny. Get out of my head!
After the sauna, I took a walk out to the boat dock, watched for a few seconds as the tiny fish rose in the lake, and then dunked myself again. The water was cool but not cold. A hopeful tern dove at the fish now and then. After a few attempts, it rose, satisfied, into the sky, carrying its prey in its beak.
After my parents came out of the sauna and Saku had fallen asleep, the conversation quickly drifted back to Meritta’s death.
“I’m worried about Aniliina,” my mother said as she dished freshly smoked whitefish onto our plates. “That girl has had enough hard things in her life already. She’s as smart as can be, just like Meritta was, but in many respects completely different from her mother.”
My parents, who had taught for more than thirty years at the only middle school in town and then at the junior high and high schools after the grades in the schools were combined, were walking encyclopedias on the lives of local residents. Almost every person under the age of forty-five had been in one of their classrooms, and they were well into their second generation of pupils. I wondered whether my own tendency to stick my nose in other people’s business was a result of all those conversations around the dinner table about the day’s dramatic events, including all their students’ backstories. Sometimes our parents’ occupation was a pain for us girls, since we could never cut class without our parents finding out, and sometimes other kids accused us of getting good grades simply because our parents were teachers. All of us had also shamelessly exploited the situation, secretly reading our crushes’ English essays, as I had done with Johnny’s papers—ambitious attempts at stringing dictionary words together. Mom probably would have killed us if she had ever found out.
“Aniliina is going to high school with the best GPA in the school, despite her hospital stay,” said my father. “Her report card is almost straight tens.”
“And last year she won a national art competition. She does take after her mother in some ways. And her father too, I imagine. She is an extremely good violinist,” my mother added.
“Sounds bad,” I said with a grin. “Isn’t it the smart girls who usually get anorexia?”
“When Aniliina got sick, I talked with Meritta about it, since her daughter was in my class,” said my father. “There have been a concerning number of these cases in our school in the last few years. And yes, the ones afflicted with it are usually good students. Meritta seemed to think her daughter’s sickness was caused by pressure to conform to outdated beauty ideals from when women filled more traditional roles.”
“That’s one theory. We have anorexic students in our school too,” Eeva interjected. “Is Aniliina’s father interested in his daughter’s welfare at all?”
“He’s coming, but I hear that Kaisa Miettinen is with Aniliina right now. I imagine Kaisa and Meritta were good friends, which is odd, since they seemed so different on the outside,” I said.
“They were both serious about what they did though,” said my father. “Hopefully this won’t get in the way of Kaisa’s training for the European Championships.”
“Doesn’t Kaisa have pretty strong nerves?” I asked. “Last summer at the World Championships she was in second. Then in the final round, that German threw a couple of centimeters past her. So for
her final throw, Kaisa threw ten centimeters even farther out and took home the silver. I’ve always thought she was so calm, except during interviews.”
Kaisa’s calm, reticent nature seemed to intrigue reporters. She never talked about her private life, and answered questions about whether she had a boyfriend with a cool smile. Apparently at the Presidential Ball on Independence Day she had basically run away from all the cadets eager to dance with her. But sometimes in competition you could catch a glimpse of a different Kaisa, of a woman who sent her javelin flying through the air with the focused expression of a hunter. That was the woman who let loose the widest grin you’ve ever seen after winning that silver medal. I also remembered the intensity in Kaisa’s voice when she had demanded to know whether Johnny and Meritta were in a relationship. Why had Johnny lied?
Was Kaisa in love with her cousin? The thought just popped into my head all of a sudden, and just as fast it seemed like the most obvious thing in the world. Was that why Kaisa was training out here in the middle of nowhere instead of near a beach somewhere warm? To be near Johnny?
“Kaisa studied sports psychology. Maybe that helps with Aniliina,” my mother suggested before ordering us all to bed. Saku would be waking us up early, she reminded us. Sneaking into the spare bedroom, Eeva and I found Saku snoring quietly with a teddy bear under his arm and his blanket balled up under his belly. My parents’ low voices and the rattling of dishes from the main room sounded strangely familiar—memories coming back to life.
I still didn’t know how to start getting to know my parents as an adult. I didn’t even know whether I really wanted to know them other than as the people who had controlled my life for those first nineteen years. What good would it do anyone to unload my childhood traumas onto them since no one could change the past? I guess I had thought that if I knew my parents better, I could learn to understand Maria Kallio’s wants and needs better too. But I wasn’t sure whether I dared anymore to take the plunge into myself.
6
In the morning, I awoke to something small and smelling of milk crawling on me and yelling “Antee-tee-tee!” and “Upuh-upuh!” Then it grabbed my hair and started pulling. Opening my eyes, I saw Saku’s grinning, slobbery face hovering above my head.
I swam for fifteen minutes and ate about three times more breakfast than usual before departing for town. I had decided to stop by Ella’s house before going to work. I had to be the one to ask Ella directly about the brooch. Hopefully Koivu was coming from Joensuu again to help with the interviews, because I wanted someone to bounce ideas off of.
Ella’s family lived in a slightly run-down wooden house right on the edge of the sinkhole zone. The house was originally one of the homes the mining company built for its workers, and was intended for two families. Ella’s husband, Matti, had turned half of it into an art studio by pulling down some of the interior walls. The yard with its unmowed grass was a permanent art exhibit for a group of steel sculptures created during a period when Matti was obsessed with “giving material form.” This was a departure from the standard themes of his paintings—triangles and cubes. Typically, he painted these shapes in distinctive three-dimensional arrangements that made recognizing his work fairly easy. I had received one of his paintings as a present on my thirtieth birthday.
After knocking, I walked in without waiting for a reply. The children, Ville and Viivi, were sitting in the living room watching The Moomins cartoons. Ella was busy with something in the kitchen, and Matti was nowhere in sight.
“Morning! Tea?” Judging by her bedhead and the wrinkles in her nightgown, Ella had just woken up.
“Sure. Is Matti still asleep?”
“No, he’s been in the studio since eight. I don’t know whether he slept at all given this whole Meritta thing…” Ella crossed the kitchen to close the door. “He’s barely done anything but cry since he heard.”
“Were they that close?”
“They’ve known each other for at least fifteen years. They studied together at the Ateneum.” Ella poured me a cup. Her tea was usually much stronger than I preferred, so I mixed in a good amount of milk.
I always forgot that Matti was ten years older than Ella and me. He was so childlike somehow. Ella and Matti met at the Workers’ Academy, where Ella had been studying to become an arts administrator and Matti was teaching painting. Ella, who had never been the type to fall head-over-heels for anyone, would have accepted a marriage proposal from Matti the very next week.
Matti was a nice guy. He could be a bit frivolous, but I got the impression that was just an artistic role he was playing. He was a talker, and sometimes even I had a hard time getting a word in edgewise. Usually he was brimming with enthusiasm for some scheme or another. Although he was a respected artist, he was still eager to teach and help out at the Finnish Artists’ Association. The young students at the local art school and the community center painting circle were lucky to have such a qualified teacher. And Matti enjoyed teaching and organizing art camps, which were a good counterbalance to the solitude of painting.
Ella drank her tea silently while I sipped mine and wondered desperately how to start the conversation about the brooch. I was sure Ella had been wearing it when I was joking about pouring punch on Johnny’s head. And at that point, the Tower had been locked.
“Hey, Ella, the night before last you were wearing a Kalevala brooch on your folk costume. My sister’s birthday is in a few weeks, and I was thinking she might like something similar. Could you show it to me?”
Ella looked at me as if she didn’t have any idea what I was talking about, but then she stood up and went to go look for the piece of jewelry. From the living room I could hear Little My laughing hysterically on the television and Ville and Viivi joining in. I hated the sugary-pastel Japanese animation of The Moomins, which were so ubiquitous nowadays I was surprised they weren’t being printed on toilet paper. Identifying the wistful optimism of Tove Jansson’s original characters in these bubble-gum versions was difficult.
Ella came back empty-handed. “I can’t find it. Last night I washed the blouse that goes with the outfit, so the brooch might be in the washing machine.” Ella nodded toward the bathroom, where I could hear the rumbling of the machine. “I’ve been so upset myself that I dumped the kids’ leftover cereal in the laundry basket instead of the trash this morning.” Ella’s voice was pleading, as if begging me not to ask about the brooch.
“Won’t it get ruined in the wash?”
“It won’t hurt silver. I use a natural soap,” she said before shoving a big piece of bread in her mouth. Stirring my tea, I hoped Ella’s brooch really was in the washing machine and not at the Joensuu police station. You couldn’t buy Kalevala jewelry in town—you had to go somewhere bigger like Joensuu, to a real jewelry shop. Eventually during an interview someone would remember Ella wearing it. I would have to keep an eye on the family’s travel and watch for the brooch to reappear in Ella’s wardrobe.
“Your friend Pekka Koivu stopped by yesterday. He’s nice. He asked when we left the party.”
“He probably didn’t press you very hard after you said you left with me.”
“No, he didn’t. Having friends in the police is good.” Ella laughed, but the pleading was still there in her voice.
“Thanks for the tea. I should get to work. Tell Matti to take care.”
I walked through the living room, past the TV where the Snork Maiden was sniffling and Little My was still laughing. Out in the yard, violets and daisies were blooming in pleasant disarray, a chipped porcelain plate lay on the ground with a few drops of milk left in it, perhaps put out for the hedgehogs. I felt like going back in and asking Ella to open the washing machine. If she was lying, why?
Because the direct route was closed due to the unstable ground around the cave-in, I had to drive around the Tower to get to the police station. The parking lot at the Old Mine was full, including several charter buses. Maybe news of the murder in the county paper that morning had attract
ed extra tourists. Had Sergeant Järvisalo given permission to reopen the Tower already? I slowed down enough to be able to glance up, but all I could see was the sunlight reflecting off the Tower windows.
Hopponen was lounging in the break room at the station and reading the sports pages. This was his idea of playing duty officer.
“That guy from the county is in your office. Everybody else is out doing interviews,” he said. Over his shoulder, I glanced at the soccer results and the quarter-page ad under them with Kaisa Miettinen launching a javelin into the distance. That spring Kaisa had landed a hefty sponsorship contract—for a female athlete—with one of the long-distance phone companies. I wondered why a phone company would choose Kaisa, since she didn’t seem like the type to spend time chatting on the phone.
“Ave Maria,” Koivu said, looking concerned as I stepped into the office. “It’s good you came. Um…Did you go home with a man named Jarmo Miettinen Friday night?”
“I did.” I hoped Koivu didn’t notice me blushing.
“And this Miettinen is an old flame of yours?” When I nodded, now even redder, Koivu continued. “When I went to question him yesterday, he said he went to his parents’ house for the night and that you were together most of the way. He even mentioned being relieved to have such a reliable witness. Then just a few minutes ago, I happened to talk to one of the last people to leave the party, at two thirty, who said that he saw Miettinen on his way back toward the Old Mine around that time. Three people were leaving right around then, and they all report seeing Miettinen.”
“Bloody hell!”
“And that’s not all. I started looking through the notes your boys have been compiling, and I saw that Järvi interviewed Miettinen’s estranged wife. She says she saw Miettinen at their house at about three fifteen, apparently picking up his mountain bike. Mrs. Miettinen heard noise outside and got up to check on things, at which point she saw her husband and went back to sleep.”
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