by Ann Yost
"Loaded up and ready to go," he said. "Dang. We haven't had a body in that morgue in I don't know how long. Not this century. Plenty of bodies back in the day, of course. Lots of conflict among the miners." He looked older and tired, especially in contrast to Erik. "Murder. It's a bad business."
"Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity," Miss Irene quoted. "For they shall soon be cut down like the grass and wither as the green herb."
"Providence, Irene?"
Miss Irene looked at her friend. "Someone wanted Mr. Martin dead and he is dead. Surely, that is providential for the killer."
Suddenly, Riitta's practical good sense reasserted itself.
"Tom," she said, "you must go up and see about Miss Thyra's headache and check on Flossie. I'll put together a light lunch for each of them and bring it up." She looked at me. "Hatti, you get the ladies settled in the parlor with a cup of tea. They can talk to the deputy."
"Oh, no, dearie," Aunt Ianthe said, "we want to help, too. We'll make some little sandwiches for Flossie and bring them up. You go on with the good doctor."
A short time later, Aunt Ianthe, Miss Irene and I carried the sandwiches up to Mrs. Ollanketo, along with a carafe of coffee and a glass of water. The door to her room was open and she was propped up against a bank of pillows. The white curls that would normally have been secured by bobby pins, were disheveled and, for once, there was no twinkle in her blue eyes.
"We've brought you some lunch, Mrs. O.," I said, with what I hoped was a bright smile. "And some company. Aunt Ianthe and Miss Irene and I have missed you."
"I'm an old sleepyhead," she said. She spoke in the familiar monotone but her voice had lost some volume and vigor. "I'm glad to see all of you."
The tray was the kind with the little legs and I set it up across her lap and invited the other ladies to take the two available seats in the room.
"I'll just go see if Miss Thyra needs anything," I said, looking at Mrs. Ollanketo so she could see me. Her lips pulled into a little line and something flared in her eyes.
"Don't go away, Hatti. I want to speak to you."
I assured her I'd be right back. I found Doc out on the landing near the antique table where he kept his bag. He was wearing plastic gloves and filling a syringe. Miss Thyra's door was closed.
"That stubborn old woman refuses to take the Verapamil," he said, darkly. "Anyone can see that she's in pain but she's determined to be a martyr."
"Let me guess. She told you that if God wanted her to be in pain who was she to gainsay his will?"
"You've heard that before." Tom almost chuckled. "I've heard it, too. It's the kind of thing my maternal grandmother used to say when she had a guilty conscience about missing church or letting her temper slip. Think that's what it is with Thyra? She killed Alex Martin and now she thinks she deserves a headache?"
I knew he was teasing but the words shocked me and the breath caught in my throat.
"You don't mean that, do you?"
"Why not? Thyra Poonjola was one of those who'd have been displaced if the lighthouse was sold. She's as good a candidate as anyone."
"What about moving the body? She's pretty old." The tight expression faded from his eyes.
"You're right, of course. I don't seem to be myself today. I don't know when I've been so off balance. Anyway, I talked to Flossie earlier. She's going to get a second dose of Digitalin in a few minutes but she said she said she wanted to speak to you."
"I know." I crossed the landing and ushered the other ladies out of the room. Then I went over to the bed and sat on the side of it. "I'm sorry we didn't get to take that sauna last night, Mrs. Ollanketo. We'll have a raincheck as soon as Doc Kukka gives us the okay."
"I've had a lot of sauna in my life," she said, her voice overloud, as usual. "Doc told me about Alex Martin, Henrikki. Is it true that someone pushed him off the tower?"
"I'm afraid so. But I don't want you to worry about it. The sheriff's deputy is a nice young man. You can meet him when you wake up." I smiled at her.
"Do you know who did it?"
I thought it was an interesting way to phrase the question. Not, 'does anyone know who did it' but more personal, as if she knew the culprit's identity. But, surely, that was impossible.
"Nobody knows yet. But we'll find out."
Her eyes looked past me out the bedroom door onto the landing. Tom, Arvo, Erik and Danny were gathered there, speaking in low tones.
"I want you to do something for me, Hatti," she said. "There is a blue mitten in the bottom drawer of my bureau. Can you get it?" I found it easily, as it was the only one with a blue background.
"This is a match to the green Arjeplog mitten, isn't it? Miss Thyra told us the green background was for women, the blue, for men. It's beautiful. Did you make it?"
"Yes. I want you to give it to Thyra."
Suddenly, I understood. Mrs. Ollanketo had slept through the history of mittens. She didn't know it was over. "Oh, I don't think," I started to say, then stopped. What harm could be done to let her think she was contributing to Miss Thyra's success?
"Of course I'll give it to her," I said. "As soon as she wakes up from her nap."
The old lady sank back onto the pillows but she didn't seem especially relieved. Her face looked older than I'd ever seen it. She appeared weary and resigned.
"Say your goodbyes," Tom Kukka said, entering the room with a poised syringe. "Flossie here is going back to dreamland for a few hours."
I kissed the old, withered cheek, then headed back up the circular staircase to my room. Since I didn't know when Miss Thyra would wake up, I didn't want to carry the mitten around for hours. The watch room door was open and there were voices coming from inside it, so I joined them.
"Geez Louise," I said, as I recognized Erik Sundback. "You're Voldemort."
"What?"
"The dark lord from Harry Potter. He has the power of teleportation. Didn't I just speak with you, seconds ago, down in Mrs. O.'s room?"
Sundback laughed a little ruefully. "I've only been here a minute or two. Figured I'd better take a look around since it seems like this is where it happened. And then my friend, Ellwood here, joined me. It's so hard to believe that just last night Alex was in here, working. There are his glasses," he pointed to the pair on the secretary, "and his windbreaker. But where are the papers he was working on? And where are his shoes?"
"He was barefoot," I recalled.
"It's an interesting point. I spoke with the sheriff on the phone. He said the shoes were missing." He chuckled, suddenly. "Well, what he actually said was 'the corpus is barefooted." He looked around the small room. "If that's true, shouldn't the shoes be here?" And then he noticed the mitten in my hand. "You expecting a change in the weather?"
I explained about the Arjeplog mitten from Swedish Lapland.
"Mrs. Ollanketo slept through Miss Thyra's presentation this morning. She thinks it hasn't happened yet and wanted to contribute something of her own."
"So the mitten is half Finnish, half Swedish," Erik said. "Like me." I nodded.
"Arvo made that point this morning." Sundback grinned, ruefully.
"From now on my name will be synonymous with workhouse mittens," he said. "At least it will keep me on the minds of the ladies but only as a hybrid."
"Hybrids are good things up here," I reminded him. "You get to enjoy all the cultural perks of two countries." Erik laughed at that.
"I was raised in a series of foster homes," he said. "None of my foster parents were much interested in cultural customs including birthdays and Christmas."
"I'm sorry," I said, feeling a flash of quick sympathy. He grinned at me again.
"I survived. And now, at the ripe old age of fifty-three, I'm ready to start exploring my heritage."
"Why now?"
"It's never too late for that," he said, lightly, "any more than it's too late to fall in love." He didn't pause and I figured the subject was closed.
"I'm concerned about Mrs. Ollanketo. Does doc think she'll be all right?"
"She's got congestive heart failure," I said. "One of her symptoms is an occasional irregular heartbeat. In an extreme situation, the beats become so far apart that the heart is not pumping enough blood to the brain and the patient faints. That's what happened last night when we were crossing the lawn to get to the sauna. She just collapsed."
Erik frowned. "Any way to prevent that from happening again?"
I shrugged. "Avoiding stress and over exertion. Tom asked me after it happened whether she was upset about something. She'd just seemed tired. She was, of course, much more upset this afternoon when she found out about Alex Martin's death but then, anyone would be."
"Poor lady." He shook his head. "Well, I'll let the two of you get back to sleuthing. My suggestion, set up an interview spot, maybe the parlor. You can close the doors to the foyer and the dining room and have some privacy to talk to people there. I'll be around in case Riitta needs anything so, if I can help you, don't hesitate to ask."
Chapter 12
"Nice guy," Ellwood said, after the lawyer had left.
"He's been a huge help to my cousin and Arvo. He's handled all the legal stuff and paperwork. And you know how excitable Arvo is. Erik has been kind of a yin to his yang. A voice of reason." And then I remembered the shocking, frightening moments in the middle of the festival when Mrs. Ollanketo had slumped against me throwing us both to the sand. "And he was a rock last night. Mrs. O. fell on top of me and they got her onto her back with her feet elevated while Doc ran up to the lighthouse to get a syringe. And then Alex and Erik carried her up to her room."
Ellwood frowned. "Did anything happen to upset her on the walk to the sauna?"
"Nothing traumatic. There were dozens of folks around eating and drinking, singing and dancing. There were kids with sparklers. It was busy and loud but that wouldn't have bothered Flossie Ollanketo. She's completely deaf but she can read lips as far as twenty feet away."
"Could she have lip read a conversation that upset her?"
I pictured the scene on the lawn. It had been a typical small town festival, the kind you see depicted in an Americana jigsaw puzzle, complete with lighthouse and beach and a maypole. I'd noticed half a dozen groups of two or more people.
"I guess she could have," I said, slowly. "Everyone was out there except the older ladies from the lighthouse and Captain Jack. I remember seeing Riitta and Tom and Arvo and Danny and Erik. Alex surprised us by taking a sauna and he'd just come out of it when Mrs. O. fainted. I don't think there's anything in that, though," I said. "She'd been shaky throughout the walk and her breathing had gotten rougher. She did tell me she had taken a sauna every Juhannus of her adult life and she implied this would be the last. She may have been thinking about her mortality."
Ellwood said nothing for a moment.
"Sundback likes your cousin Riitta."
I nodded. "I hadn't really noticed that before. Tom Kukka has proposed to her repeatedly but she refuses to marry him, I think, because she feels she's too old for him."
"Maybe she doesn't love him."
It was a chilling thought. Poor Tom.
"Hatti, where was Erik Sundback last night?"
"He left about eleven thirty to drive back to his condo in Houghton. Tom left at the same time to go to the hospital in Hancock."
"Did you see them leave?"
I laughed, suddenly. "They stopped by the kitchen to say goodnight. Not to me, so much, as to Riitta. I assume they left via the front door since it is closer to where the cars were parked. By then the wind was howling, thunder crashing and lightning flashing. It was not a great night to be out."
"What did you do after that?"
"I went upstairs and went to bed. With the dogs," I added.
"Did you see anybody else the rest of the evening?"
I didn't answer immediately as it dawned on me what he was doing.
"You're interviewing me here and now?"
He shrugged. "You had the room next door to where it all happened and we're up here now. I thought maybe you'd remember something important."
A wave of nausea rippled in my stomach. I'd been aware, on some level, that what he said was true but I hadn't expected to have to tell him what I'd heard until I'd had a chance to think about it. But that wasn't the way it worked, was it? My testimony was only useful if it came from my raw memory. I just prayed my raw memory wouldn't implicate anyone who was innocent. I told him about overhearing Danny Thorne speaking to Alex.
"He sounded angry?"
There was another wave of nausea and I ground my teeth. I was aware, suddenly, that there was perspiration on my upper lip.
"I should probably tell you that Danny had just discovered that Alex Martin was his biological father. The same was true for Alex. I think Danny went to see Alex to try to convince him to relinquish his claim on the lighthouse and trust fund. He said Alex owed Riitta for the years of single parenting."
"Holy wha," Ellwood said, using a strong Yooper expletive. "That's a motive, all right."
I jumped to Danny's defense.
"There was no need to kill him. Alex agreed to give up his claim on the property."
"You heard him tell that to Danny?"
"No," I said, before I spotted the trap. By then it was too late to take back my words. "I heard Alex tell that to Riitta. She came up to see him after Danny left."
"What time was that?"
"Twelve," I said, miserably. "The Witching Hour."
And that's when I remembered something else. Something that had truly shocked me at the time but which I'd forgotten because of everything else that had happened.
"The words witching hour reminded me," I said, suddenly. "Chakra Starshine and her friends were on the beach last night. She's the new yoga instructor in Red Jacket and she's also a Wiccan. She and her coven were celebrating the summer solstice, and they were doing it skyclad."
"Skyclad?"
"Dressed in only the sky."
"You mean, naked?" I nodded.
"Could they have killed Alex Martin," he asked.
"Why would they?" He shrugged.
"A ritual sacrifice? Maybe they couldn't find a goat. Maybe Mrs. Ollanketo lip read a conversation about that."
"I don't think so. They were farther down the beach. And, I'm sure they all went home when the storm started."
Ellwood appeared to think.
"Hatti, when Mrs. O. spoke to you just now, did she ask you about the future of the lighthouse?" I shook my head.
"Wouldn't you think that would be the first thing on her mind? I mean, if Alex Martin had claimed the place, he'd have torn it down and sold the land, right?"
"I see what you mean. I think Mrs. O. was more worried about Miss Thyra's lecture."
We headed down the circular stairs and I told Ellwood about the contradictory evidence of the damp clothing, the disturbed sand and the blood, and the anonymous tip about a body.
He scratched his head. "Sounds to me like somebody's trying to confuse us," he said. "First thing we've got to do is find out when the rain started. By the way, I sure appreciate your help in this. I've never investigated a murder before."
I was pleased that he wanted me.
"I haven't either but I did spend a year at law school, of course, it was mostly torts and contracts. And then during the last few months I wasn't really paying attention."
"Attention deficit disorder?"
"Nope. Love. It didn't end well."
"I'm sorry," he said, sympathetically.
"It's okay. I've watched enough Law & Order episodes to muddle my way through this."
"All I really need you to do is give me some background on all these folks. You know them better than I do."
That took the wind out of my sails.
"Sure. I think I can handle that."
As we headed down the hallway to the glass-paned doors that open into the parlor, I figured we'd have to clear away the folding c
hairs and Miss Thyra's banner and the mittens to turn the place into an interview room.
But while we'd been upstairs, even though it was midsummer and as far away from Christmas as you can get, the house had been visited by a tonttu, which is a mythical elf who helps out in the household. I gazed at the smiles on two wrinkled faces as Aunt Ianthe and Miss Irene welcomed us into the lecture hall-turned-tearoom.
Make that plural. Tontut.
Chapter 13
The rows of folding chairs and the lectern were gone. The mittens still hung by the chimney but they weren't bothering anybody. The Victorian sofas and chairs were still pushed against the walls and center stage was occupied by a card table and four chairs which would have served perfectly as an interview room except for the white, lace tablecloth spread across it and the Arabia china, cups, saucers, plates and teapot of blue cornflowers on a white background.
There was a crystal bowl of roses in the center, crystal flutes filled with pink lemonade and a plate of crustless sandwiches, fruit and shortbread cookies.
I took a quick peek at Ellwood, afraid he'd be annoyed at the interference with his investigation, but he just looked appreciative. And hungry.
"No reason you should have to interview people on an empty stomach," Aunt Ianthe said, with a grin. She and Miss Irene took their places across the table from one another, leaving the other two seats to the deputy and me. "Tea, anyone?"
"Thank you," Ellwood said, pulling out a chair for me. "It seems to me we should interview the two of you first."
"Oh my goodness, Irene," Aunt Ianthe said, enormously pleased. "We're suspects!"
"Witnesses," Ellwood corrected, helping himself to a sandwich. "Everybody is just a witness."
"For thou shalt be his witness unto all men of what thou hast seen and heard," Miss Irene quoted, passing a jug of cream. "Acts of the Apostles."
Ellwood consumed three sandwiches in record time and then pulled out his cellphone. I held my breath, wondering not whether but when Aunt Ianthe would reprimand him for ill manners but he surprised me by admitting it.
"I'm not making a call," he said, apologetically, "I'm looking up what questions to ask. You see, this is my first murder investigation."