Copper Heart

by Leena Lehtolainen

  Between the shelves, little tables and leather chairs were strewn. Against one wall was an oak writing desk nearly eight feet by five, and against another, a fireplace. Two large windows faced west, opening onto a hillscape of birch trees. The only thing missing was the scotch decanter.

  “Would you care for coffee?”

  Without waiting for an answer, Mrs. Kivinen rang a bell next to her armchair. A moment later, a woman who seemed to be an honest-to-God parlor maid—even though she wasn’t wearing an apron or a white bonnet—walked into the room. Suddenly I felt as though I had been thrust into an Agatha Christie mystery. Of course if that were the case the parlor maid would have conjured up a salver of sherry and I would have had to ask for crème de cassis.

  On the way over, Koivu and I had agreed that I would handle the questioning. Having recovered from the lions, he pulled his notebook out of his pocket and readied his pen. Convincing myself that this library shared the same reality as my hometown took a while. When the maid brought the coffee and cake, Koivu and I politely took what was offered, although I felt like I had coffee running out my ears.

  “Did you know Jari Korhonen, the victim from the night before last?” I finally managed to ask.

  Barbro Kivinen sipped her coffee black, and she did not appear to be touching the cake.

  “I couldn’t say I knew him personally. But I know the names and faces of all of our employees at the Old Mine. Korhonen was also one of the long-term unemployed and we were receiving an employment subsidy to keep him on.” Barbro made it sound as if Jaska wouldn’t have had any other opportunities to find work without this support. “I noticed him at the gala on Friday dressed entirely inappropriately and clearly intoxicated, which I admit I found slightly distressing. But fortunately he disappeared early on in the evening.”

  This was not putting me in a friendly mood. Apparently the same caste system dominated Barbro Kivinen’s world as the one that ruled my early childhood. Why had she agreed to marry the son of a miner then? Judging from her current digs, the decision hadn’t hurt her any.

  “You said you didn’t hear anything strange from the direction of the Sump on Wednesday night?”

  “Our bedrooms are up on the top floor and the windows face the Old Mine. Would you like to come and see?”

  I shook my head no.

  “One can neither see nor hear anything in that direction from them. And besides, it was raining that night. An old metal roof like this is quite loud in the rain.”

  “You’ve already been interviewed about Meritta Flöjt’s death, but we’ve received some new information since then.” I decided to get straight to the point even if it might mean inviting her husband’s wrath.

  “Do you mean my husband’s relationship with her last spring? I’ve been waiting for someone to dig that up.”

  Barbro Kivinen smiled when she saw my expression of astonishment.

  “This wasn’t Seppo’s first extramarital dalliance by any means. I’ve learned there’s nothing to be gained by getting upset over them. He doesn’t know everything about my life either. Still, this marriage and partnership works quite well. Neither of you are married, are you?” she asked, looking from Koivu to me. “Young, single people can afford to maintain all sorts of idealistic notions.”

  Mrs. Kivinen poured more coffee into our cups. Not knowing what to say next, I took another piece of cake and crammed it into my mouth.

  Fortunately, Barbro continued her monologue: “Of course, my husband has probably assured you that I don’t know anything about the whole affair. That was very gallant of him, since it would have given me a fine motive for murder. It would look better for him if I knew about the relationship. But the affair was over in any case. Meritta Flöjt was an aesthete, and she chose Adonis over Seppo Kivinen. I don’t wonder why Seppo was a little churlish for a while around May Day. Losing out to someone younger and more handsome would injure anyone’s self-esteem.” Barbro Kivinen’s voice was as sharp as a cat’s claw.

  “But I suppose our same story applies to that night as to last Friday. We were sleeping blissfully, each in our own bed. And besides, I know my husband. Seppo wouldn’t kill out of jealousy. He wouldn’t sacrifice all of this. He’s risen so far. After we moved into this house, he told me how once he and a couple of other local boys wandered onto this property and the caretaker ran them off with his German shepherds. He wouldn’t endanger what he’s achieved here. And the same goes for me. But now, unfortunately, I have to ask you to leave. When Seppo’s secretary made this appointment she didn’t know that I had a massage scheduled for two fifteen.”

  In her blue housecoat, Barbro Kivinen looked like a queen whose every whim must be obeyed. So we slunk away like scolded lap dogs.

  “Would Mrs. Kivinen kill to keep all that?” Koivu asked as we were driving back to the police station.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What if Kivinen was still crazy about Flöjt and promised to leave his wife?”

  “I don’t know. But I can imagine just about any kind of melodrama playing out in that house. Barbro seems like a pretty cold woman. I have a hard time imagining her getting so mad she would throw someone off the Tower. And I can’t see her even agreeing to talk with someone like Jaska.”

  “You don’t like her?”

  “I wouldn’t go quite that far. There’s always something fascinating about people who know what they want,” I said, paraphrasing Barbro.

  “But living with them isn’t much fun.” Koivu sighed.

  Soon after we arrived at the station, Koivu took off to Joensuu to write his report, but promised he would come back the next day on the seven o’clock bus to accompany me to the Copper Cup and see the stripper. I tried to reach Ella, but her answering machines at work and at home said she would be away all day Friday. I left messages on both, telling her that she had been seen on the mine hill the night of Meritta’s murder and instructing her to contact me immediately if she preferred talking to me instead of Detective Sergeant Järvisalo.

  The little copper key was still waiting on my desk. What on earth did it open? What if Jaska had found what he was looking for at Meritta’s house and then hid it somewhere? But where?

  Then a new place occurred to me. The band room. I wondered if the key was still the same one used to open the other doors at the school. Calling my parents, I arranged to borrow my father’s key to the school.

  The band room door was as stiff as always, and I had to push on it for a while, but it opened. No one practiced here anymore except Jaska’s band, since the new youth center offered much better spaces with a bathroom and windows even. Jaska and company had inherited the high school basement by accident, and presumably he and Pasi and Johnny had felt ancient compared to the crowd at the youth center. With Jaska gone, Pasi might have to find a new home for his drum kit and the keyboardist for his ties. The bass was lying on the table, along with Johnny’s guitar. Only Jaska had taken his home; he had always been careful with his equipment.

  I decided to start with the music shelf. Nothing out of the ordinary, just overflowing ashtrays, a dried piece of rye bread, a crushed juice carton, and piles of sheet music. Afraid of becoming too nostalgic by rummaging around in the familiar songs, I just shook the books and thicker stacks to see if anything fell out from between the pages. Then I checked in the guitar cases and drums. I dug around in the chair cushions. Nothing. The last thing was the couch. It was a fold-out model, and under the seat cushions was a storage box for bed linens. Jaska had stashed things there before.

  Just as he had done recently. Under a truly disgusting blanket and pillow, I found a half-empty vodka bottle and a sack of clinking beer bottles. Jaska’s emergency supply. The empty bottles hidden in the couch were sufficient to redeem for a pint at the Copper Cup. Sometimes he would bring women here, and he had probably spent the night on occasion too when he was so drunk he didn’t have the nerve to go home. But there was nothing in the room or under the couch that the small copper ke
y could have fit.

  Then an idea began to take shape in my mind. Could Jaska have met his murderer here? The school building stood abandoned during the summer, so it would be a safe place to rendezvous. And a very natural place, if the person he had been meeting was Johnny.

  I closed up the couch and sat down, leaning against the cigarette-smoke stained back. I had spent so much time sitting here waiting for the others, listening hopefully for steps in the hallway, wondering what if it wasn’t another member of Rat Poison? What if it was Johnny? Distinguishing the different footsteps had been easy, the stamping of our drummer, Jaska’s kicking and shuffling, and Johnny’s quick soccer-player’s steps. Even if I couldn’t tell from his steps, he always flung the door open the same way.

  Damn it, Johnny, where have you disappeared to?

  Picking up his guitar, I started plucking something incoherent and then as if by accident fell into the first bars of “Scarborough Fair.”

  That’s when I heard the door open and those familiar quick steps. The place had ripped me out of my police role once again, because without thinking I sprang up and screamed Johnny’s name. As I burst into the stairwell, I heard the steps turn back up the stairs and the door shut with a resounding thud. In the seconds it took me to fumble it open again, Johnny had disappeared. Standing in the empty schoolyard, I called his name in vain.

  I didn’t bother to go after him though. He wasn’t going to be able to hide much longer in a town this size now that I knew where he had been sleeping. I went back and looked at the juice carton and dried rye crust still in its packaging. The bread had been packed only the day before. If Jaska had used this as a base, then why not Johnny too? If I would have had the presence of mind to keep my mouth shut, I could have caught him. Whether I was more annoyed or relieved, I wasn’t really sure.

  Although I didn’t think Johnny would come back, I left a note on the table telling him about the warrant for his arrest. Then I took the band room keys to the station and told the boys to check on the basement at regular intervals.

  At the end of the day, I stopped by to tell my parents I couldn’t return their keys quite yet. While I was there, they managed to talk me into staying for the whitefish they had smoked that morning. Somehow sitting at my parents’ table felt silly—eating off the same old plates, observing how the house remained the same after I had left and changed so much.

  My dad had also spoken with Uncle Pena’s doctor, the one who seemed convinced that Pena’s attacks were brought on by the local news—though what caused the initial stroke remained unknown.

  “There was definitely something going on with Pena and Meritta,” my father said contemplatively. “Over winter vacation I spent a couple of days out at the farm felling trees in the backwoods, and once I happened to answer the phone when Meritta called. It was like Pena didn’t want to talk while I was there; I remember wondering if our eternal bachelor was a little infatuated with her…”

  “What did Pena say to her?” I didn’t want Dad to get bogged down again on how Pena had never married because of his fear of women.

  “At first I thought it must be city business. Pena asked whether she was sure that some contract said something. Then he sighed and said that she would have to do something, even though it wouldn’t be pleasant. After hearing her reply, he smiled.”

  “And then?”

  “That was all.” My father spread his arms. “Then he said something about some colors. But the most interesting thing about it all was the tone of the conversation; it almost felt intimate, and I’ve never heard Pena use that same voice with anyone but his cats.”

  I knew the tone my father meant—my sisters and I called it Uncle Pena’s “kitty-kitty voice.” It was an utterly unmanly cooing, similar to the exaggerated way mothers talked to their babies in diaper commercials.

  Pena had undoubtedly been infatuated with Meritta.

  But I wondered about their talk of colors. The colors of the political parties—red, blue, and two shades of green? Or the colors of paints Meritta was using for some project? Presumably the artists’ association had some sort of contract with the city. But so did Kivinen’s company.

  Attempting to use finesse, my parents began trying to pry out my plans for the future after Antti returned. I was the only one they had left to marry off, after all, now that Helena and Petri had tied the knot a few weeks before Antti’s dissertation defense. My aunts had asked why we couldn’t combine the defense and our wedding.

  “Hell’s bells, now that I’m actually finishing this thing, I want to be the center of attention for at least one day,” had been Antti’s reply.

  Hopeless knothead that I am, I let slip at the dinner table that a couple of days earlier I had been considering having a baby. They were, predictably, overjoyed. But at the point that they started counting months and explaining how I could inherit all of Helena’s baby accessories if Antti and I got down to business right after he returned to Finland, I beat a hasty retreat. Any hint that they expected something of me, and I rebelled. Where did the feeling that I always had to accomplish something before I could have their approval come from? Get tens on my tests, graduate summa cum laude, go to law school instead of the police academy…and now have a baby and get engaged.

  Missing out on life as a thirty-year-old just to rebel against my parents was idiotic. But did I treat Antti the same way I treated them? I would believe he loved me so long as I could show him that I could get along perfectly well without him first. I could dare to get married if he still wanted me after returning from overseas. Was that it? Was I crouched on the top of a glass mountain after all, waiting for a prince to succeed in climbing up the slippery slope? Or was I the one climbing an endless glass mountainside, the same stretch I had started on more than fifteen years ago?

  Johnny is sure to like me if I score this goal. If I perform really well at our gig. If I lose five pounds. If I dye black streaks in my hair. I was like the person in “Scarborough Fair,” requiring miracles of myself before I could surrender to love. Maybe it was time to grow up.

  At four in the morning, while I was in the middle of an incoherent dream, the phone rang.

  “Hi. It’s Johnny. I…Never mind.”

  The call ended before I could realize it had begun.

  14

  I woke up to someone pounding furiously on the front door. The rain appeared to have stopped, and the sun was high in the sky. I had tossed and turned after Johnny’s call, lying awake and thinking about whether the caller really was him or just a prank. The alarm clock on the dresser said 11:05. A moment later the pounding was on my bedroom door.

  “First you leave threatening messages on all my phones and then you just sleep! Are you serious?” Ella yelled ferociously just outside my room. She knew where we kept the spare key behind the third step and had let herself in.

  An instant later she was next to my bed with her hands on her hips, looking even bigger and more broad-shouldered than usual. Even when I managed to drag myself up out of bed, I was still six inches shorter than her.

  After putting on a full pot of water for coffee, I stuck my head under the ice-cold tap for a full minute. Slowly my brain was starting to get back in gear. Tuija had seen Ella on the mine hill the night of the murder. That was what I was supposed to talk to Ella about. That and the grant for the art camp.

  “I’m glad you came,” I said as I poured our first cups of coffee.

  “I would rather not have. How official is this discussion going to be?”

  “Completely off the record.”

  I didn’t even intend to use the tiny tape recorder I employed now and then to record conversations illegally.

  “Nothing you tell me now can be used against you in court.”

  While Ella gathered herself, I made myself a couple of open-faced sandwiches and poured muesli on some yogurt.

  “It’s true what Tuija Miettinen saw. I did go back to the Old Mine on the night Meritta was murdered. But I wasn’t lyi
ng when I said I didn’t go back to meet Meritta or to look for my brooch that night. I was looking for Matti.”

  “Was Matti there?”

  “I don’t know. After the party we went home. I fell asleep around two and then I woke up at three to Ville talking in his sleep. That was when I noticed Matti wasn’t in bed next to me. At first I thought he was just up calming Ville down. But when he didn’t come back after some time, I peeked into the studio. He wasn’t there either. With my mom sleeping on the couch in the living room, I knew the children would have someone with them if I left. So I decided to go looking for Matti.”

  Just then Mikko started scratching at the front door. As I let him out, I stopped for a moment to breathe in the scent of the spruce forest drying in the sun. The contrast between the peacefulness outside and Ella’s tumultuous confession felt strangely incongruous.

  “Why did you assume that Matti would be at the Old Mine?” I asked, still watching Mikko from the door as he bounded along the edge of a stand of seedling trees, harassing thrushes until he found an appropriate-smelling place to do his business.

  “That brooch of mine…I probably dropped it when I went up in the Tower again looking for Meritta. That was when you were at the bottom of the Tower talking with Kaisa and Johnny. I wanted to talk to her about…”

  Ella’s words trailed off and she crumbled a piece of bread in her fingers. Her cheeks were glowing red. I didn’t have the patience to give her the time she needed.

  “About the art camp money?”

  “Exactly!” Ella’s voice sounded relieved. “Maria, Matti lied to you. It wasn’t Meritta who used the art camp grant, it was Matti.”

  I had suspected as much. Now the conversation my father had overheard between Pena and Meritta was starting to make sense. Ella turned even redder, and I felt sorry for her. Matti had pulled a scurvy trick on both of them, Ella and Meritta.