Nordic Nights (The Alix Thorssen Mysteries)

by Lise McClendon

  Everything about America was new and wonderful to Luca. It made her pretty great to be around; in fact it made you see the same old things with her fresh eyes. Even photo developing. “So, did you stay long?”

  “Last night? No, just a half hour or so. You know I can’t drink very much or I kill over.” She laughed.

  “Keel over,” I corrected. “Like the keel on a boat. We don’t want you killing, now do we? We’ve had quite enough of that.”

  She frowned, her black eyebrows jerking down. “There is one picture I want to show you.” She picked up the other stack of photos and fingered through them. They looked like the ones of Hank’s boat, its sail white as moonlight under her camera’s flash. She handed me a photograph.

  “This one. Look here.” She pointed to a shadowy figure barely visible behind the boat. For this picture she must have stepped out into the street a little after the float passed. It showed the boat, sail unfurled, from the stern, with lines of onlookers on either side of the street. “This guy with the torch.”

  I squinted at the photo. The figure seemed to be holding a torch, or maybe it was the person behind him; it was impossible to say. His arm closest to the camera appeared to be down at his side. I say “him” with some ambivalence. The face of the person was obscured by the glow of the torch held near his head.

  I frowned up at Luca. “Is this the only one that shows this guy?”

  She spread out all the pictures of the boat on the desk. She had taken a lot of them, apparently enamored of the elegant sight. It did make a remarkable scene, the white-on-white of the sail and snow, the clean, sweeping lines of the lapped siding on the ship curving to the gilded prow. “This is the end of the pictures before I ran down the street after you,” she said, pointing to the one with the figure next to the torch.

  By the time she had gotten into position on the next block, where the boat was on fire, I was on top of the ship. What seemed to take hours actually took only seconds. In one picture I’m throttling the latch to the boom; in the next I’ve disappeared, flat on my back underneath the burning sail. I felt a sour place in the pit of my stomach grow as I looked at the pictures.

  “He doesn’t show up in any of these?” I scanned the fire pictures quickly, looking over the boat for the elusive figure. “No torches at all?”

  “No, I don’t see him,” she said, coming around the desk to put her nose down on the pictures again. “I looked and looked. I guess he ran away.”

  Or it wasn’t him at all. I looked at the lone photograph of the torchbearer. The figure wore a dark brown coat, bulky, with an indeterminate hat, perhaps a beret or some other head-hugging type. He or she was no taller or shorter than anyone else, it seemed, but then it was difficult to see anyone around him, because of the bleed of the glow of the torch.

  “Maybe we could doctor this a little, come up with more of the face,” I said. “Do you have the negative?”

  “Oh, yes.” She pulled the plastic sleeve of negatives from the paper envelope and handed it to me. “Conrad wanted them, but I refused.”

  “Good girl.” I smiled at her. “Did he pay you for the pictures?”

  “Oh, yes. I told him one hundred dollars for the fire shots. He said fifty. I said for fifty you can have just two. So he picked out two and paid me fifty. Did I do good?”

  “Excellent. I’ll take these over to a photographer I know. Maybe he can make something of it.”

  Luca pulled her hat back on. It was red and soft, framing her face. “Are you going skiing tomorrow?” She had recently taken up cross-country skiing and was anxious for me to accompany her on jaunts along the Snake River under the watchful eye of the Tetons. Before Christmas we had seen a herd of elk grazing there, much to Luca’s delight.

  “I’d love to,” I said. “But with my mother here, and Hank’s problems, well, I don’t think I can swing it. And with my ribs and hands… Are you going?”

  “If I can find someone to go with me,” she said, giving me a playful squint. “Maybe that reporter, do you think?”

  I laughed. “Con? Did you get a look at his waistline?”

  She smiled, pulled on big black mittens. “You want to keep these photographs for some while?”

  “If you don’t mind, sure.”

  She agreed, already wrapping the black fuzzy muffler round and round, over her chin and mouth. Her good-byes were cheerfully muffled as she pointed at the ice sculptures on her way out the door.

  “What?” I said as she paused on the doorstep. I stepped outside and closed the door behind me. Our heat bill was ridiculous.

  Luca pulled down her scarf. “Have you seen the giant penis?”

  Back in my office I blew on my hands to warm them before I grabbed the old black rotary telephone. Heavy and solid and very, very slow, the rotary dial was ancient. This had been my father’s telephone by his bed in the early sixties, the one he rarely used except to intercept late-night phone calls from my sister’s many admirers. Rollie protected Melina, but he couldn’t protect himself. His car flew off the narrow highway next to Flathead Lake one summer night and sank fifty feet into the frigid water. We never knew how it happened. It just did, and our lives were never the same again.

  So now it was my turn to be old-fashioned and protective with the old phone. I had grown impatient waiting for Merle to redesign his ice sculpture. The time had come for action.

  “Gloria? Is Gloria there?” I asked a female voice that sounded enough like Gloria to be—

  “My sister,” Gloria said. “Visiting for the festivities. Oh, Alix, I’m so, so sorry, really, I am sick about that fire. It was terrible, terrible.”

  “Thanks, Gloria. I read what you said in the Casper paper. That was nice.” She muttered some more exclamations in her southern syrup style. I held the phone out from my ear until she ran out of gas. “Listen, this is about the ice sculptures. I—”

  She interrupted me: “Oh, my heavens, aren’t they just the most fun you ever had with your mittens on? I was over there yesterday mornin’, and I couldn’t believe how pretty they were in the sun. How they sparkled—”

  “Gloria. Listen for a second, please. There’s a problem with one of the ice sculptures.” I rattled on quickly so as to not give her an opening. “The guy’s name is Merle something or other. He’s a chef for the Rockefellers, wears a long duster and cowboy hat. He’s carving something that I think you ought to take a look at.”

  “For the Rockefellers?” Gloria’s voice got that hushed-in- the-presence-of-royalty sound. “The real Rockefellers?”

  “The ones and onlies. The sculpture, Gloria, I want you to look at it and tell me what you think.”

  “Is there something wrong with it?”

  “Let me put it this way. Everybody I’ve talked to has the same impression about what he’s carving. And if he’s carving what we think he’s carving, we’ve got a problem.”

  “So? Spill it, hon. What is it?”

  I sighed. I was hoping that if she went to look at Merle’s monolith, she would see something different from the rest of us. Wishful thinking. “Well, Gloria, to most people it looks like a six-foot-tall phallic symbol.” I decided not to mention details like the two large snowballs at the base.

  “A phallic symbol?” Gloria gasped, quietly. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “You mean a big, icy dick?”

  Such a sensitive soul. She harrumphed and gasped some more and told me she’d handle it. As I hoped. I hung up the heavy black receiver, put the telephone back on my desk, and rubbed my damaged hands together, still cold from standing outside with Luca.

  Stepping into the gallery, I positioned myself in front of the heating vent near the plate-glass window. I looked through it at the foursome pausing to point at some pottery in the gallery, chatting for a second, then coming through the door, brisk and cold and jolly. I greeted them, staying where I was, getting warm in front of the vent.

  “Looking for anything special?” I asked, even though I rarely posed so specific a qu
estion to art browsers: it was a waste of time. They murmured the usual reply, smiling back and moving off. They were two couples, both women blond, both men hunky.

  Artie was showing jewelry again. The boy sold more jewelry than the day was long. Maybe he had a career going in jewelry. He should forget art. Nobody in their right mind would open an art gallery. The foursome gave Glasius’s murals the quick once-over and exited. Quiet again.

  The jewelry buyer, an older woman already dripping in gold, found a pair of dangly silver earrings to her liking. Her old man got out his wallet, made the deal, led her out. Deep quiet. I swayed in front of the heat vent, almost drowsy with the warmth. I may have even closed my eyes. When the phone on Paolo’s desk—a sleeker model, green but still rotary—rang next to me, the jolt brought me back to life.

  “Alix! It’s me,” Luca said excitedly over the phone. “It’s your mother—she, oh, dear, Alix. Come quickly. To the hospital!”

  Chapter 10

  Of thy mother’s words mindful thou be,

  in thy heart let, darling, them dwell:

  luck everlasting in life shall have,

  the while my words thou heedest.

  In the emergency room, Luca paced in front of a pass-through window. The small waiting room was overpowered by a huge television set hanging in the corner, now showing soap opera tantrums. Luca seemed to jump six inches off the floor, her coat open and black muffler loose around her neck.

  “I saw it. I was right there,” she said. Her black hair hung in wisps across her cheeks and neck Her eyes were wide.

  “How is she? What happened?” I took Luca by the forearms.

  “The truck went by and—blam! Hit her on the side. She fell down. I was across the street, over on, on—what is that street with the little restaurant I like?”

  “Kelly? That’s where the garage is.”

  “Yes, Kelly Street. I ran into that gas station and called the ambulance.” Luca stopped, flushed and gasping for air.

  “Wait here.” I went through the door marked Emergency Personnel Only and came out the other side in the middle of a pod of rooms leading off a central desk that served as the hub and a place for doctors to write orders. I was just here last night getting my hand bandaged. I paused, and an ambulance jock came through, stethoscope and various wires dangling from his neck.

  “Help you?” he asked amiably, eyeing my bandaged hand professionally.

  “Una Helgeson. Where is she?”

  “Family?” I nodded. “Let’s find her,” he said.

  He poked his head into two rooms before we found her behind a drape in the trauma section of the emergency room. A doctor and nurse hovered over her. I waited as the EMT whispered to the doctor and took a look at my mother. He stepped back out of the draped area and whispered to me, “He’ll be out in a minute to talk to you. Can you take a seat outside and—”

  “No. I’m waiting here. What’s going on? Is she hurt?”

  He had a kind face, tanned, and a skier’s body, long and lean. “She’s pretty shaken up. They’re still assessing her injuries. But it looks like she was lucky.” The automatic doors opened at the end of the big room lit with high-powered fluorescents and cluttered with movable drapes on stands. The EMT straightened. “You can wait here. Keep it quiet, though, okay?”

  As he moved away to help the next patient, I thought about just barging in to see Una. But the thought of seeing pain on her face, an unusual and unwelcome prospect, kept me hanging back. She would never forgive me for seeing her without her guard up. My stomach was in knots. I’d had time only to throw on my clogs and grab the down jacket. I slipped off the coat in the warm room and felt the wet spots on my socks. Luca’s face peered through the wire-glass window from the waiting room. I went back, spoke to her briefly, and took up my vigil.

  It took ten or fifteen minutes for the doctor to finally turn toward me and smile. He introduced himself as Dr. Anderson. He was gray-haired, short, with blue eyes. “Your mother is doing fine. Apparently a vehicle clipped her as she walked down the street. She slid on the ice a bit; that may have saved her getting worse injuries.”

  “What injuries does she have?” I said, my voice nearly disappearing. Dr. Anderson took my arm and led me back into the enclosure.

  Una lay with her eyes closed as the nurse continued to wrap something around her arm. She looked pale and fragile, her hair a mess, her slacks smeared with snow and dirt. Her shirt was gone, and a green paper drape covered her chest.

  I swallowed hard. “Mom?”

  Her eyes fluttered open. She attempted a smile, but just then the nurse did something to her arm.

  “What’s wrong with her arm?” I asked the doctor.

  “A fracture. It’s not bad, but she’ll have it in a cast for a while. She must have tried to catch herself as she fell. She twisted her ankle, too. Luckily that’s not broken.”

  I saw that her shoes and socks were off, and one ankle appeared blue going to purple. They hadn’t wrapped it yet. I looked sharply at the doctor again. “That’s it? Nothing else?”

  “We want to keep her in the hospital overnight. She fell pretty hard, and at her age—”

  “I heard that,” Una piped up, her voice mock stern. She winced then, as if the loudness of her own voice hurt her head.

  “Quiet, Mom,” I said, much relieved that she still had her sense of humor. “Does it hurt?”

  The doctor answered. “We’ve given her some medication for pain. She’s going to feel it a bit later, all the bumps and aches. But she’ll be all right. We want to watch her overnight, as I said. Make sure nothing else crops up.”

  I cooed a few more assurances to my mother and let the doctor lead me away. It was clear she was floating on an anesthesia cloud and didn’t need me to tell her it would all be better soon. Maybe it would even be worse after the drugs wore off. I fought battling emotions of anger at whoever had done this thing, and relief that it hadn’t been worse. She was hit by a truck! Jesus Mary, she could have been killed. The voices in my head pounded so that I hardly heard the doctor asking me about my hand. He seemed to want to redo the bandage. I rubbed my forehead with my other hand and let him go at it.

  “The thing about burns is, they need air, but they need to stay clean,” Dr. Anderson was saying. “I thought I remembered you from last night. That was quite a little fire you put out.”

  “Yeah.” I blinked, looking back at the slice of Una’s feet I could see through the drapes. The doctor unwrapped the gauze, cleaned the burn (ouch, that hurt), and re-dressed it. Several times a day, he told me. Keep it clean. Yes, sir, I told him. Because it’s so fun, I sure will.

  “Now try to stay out of trouble,” Dr. Anderson said amiably. “I don’t want to see any more of your family in here for a long, long time.” He opened the door to the waiting room Luca sprang from her chair. I thanked the doctor and promised to be back this evening to see Una.

  Luca searched my face. I began: “She’s all right, but sh—”

  “She’s okay? Gracias Dios.” Luca sagged like a deflating balloon. “I was so worried I thought I was going to burst. I am thinking about Paolo and your hand and I am sick, you know? Sick.” She put a hand on her stomach.

  I linked my arm through hers and walked toward the door. “Me too. But it’s just her arm and one ankle. I’ll come back tonight and see her.”

  We walked out into the afternoon sunlight peeking under the high clouds. To the west the mountains loomed white and massive, crowned with the golden glow of the sun slipping away. I felt the shock of Una’s accident slipping into something else, a sick worry that ate away at my stomach like Luca’s.

  “My car’s over here,” I said, guiding her toward the right. As if she couldn’t see the Saab Sister half on the sidewalk, engine still sputtering and burping. The old beater, spewing fumes: I loved this car. It stayed running when you didn’t want it to, and died when you needed it. Luca stopped by the front fender, looked at me, and laughed.

  “You do th
is in Argentina, no more car!” she said, throwing up her hands as if the car would disappear in a poof. We got in, and I backed Sis off the curb gently. We headed west, into the setting sun, pulling down our visors.

  “I’m thinking about Argentina today.” Luca looked at me, rubbing her mittened hands together. “This is how it begins there. Little things.”

  “What begins?” I asked, steering around a mangy dog that had taken up position in the middle of the street next to what looked like a decomposing porcupine.

  “The intimidation of a family. Someone is arrested. Something they love is burned or destroyed. They are hurt, but not so badly they die. But they have pain.”

  I looked at her profile, her clear, iced-coffee skin and black hair pulled off her face, disappearing into the red hat. “Why are they intimidated?”

  Luca shrugged. “The usual reasons. Political, family rivals, money. You don’t have any enemies, Alix?”

  “Can’t think of any right offhand,” I said, frowning partly because of the sun in my eyes. “You think someone is trying to intimidate my family?”

  “I don’t know. I just wondered, because in Argentina things happen like this. First little things. Then, if you are not careful, if you do not pay attention, something big.”

  “Something big?”

  Luca looked out the window at the Tetons, turning pink in the afterglow, a vision of winter’s beauty, stark, picturesque, and heartbreaking.

  “Big,” she said quietly. “Like someone is killed.”

  Dropping Luca off at her house, formerly her brother’s bungalow, made me remember my little studio in the back. I ducked down the alley, swearing at myself for indulging my fancy at a time like this, and parked beside the former garage. The Saab was half in the alley, but traffic back here was light; not even the garbage was collected back here anymore. I unlocked the padlock on the door and stepped into the coldest air I’d felt since—well, since last week.

  The tiny studio was cheery despite the cold. Its yellow walls had been a snap decision at the hardware store. From there it was easy to progress to other brights: orange trim-work on the two windows, green curlicues on the beams overhead, a blue ceiling. Can’t seem to get away from blue ceilings, no matter how hard I try. Blue should be up there, high in the sky, so it is.