I wrote back: Oh, wow. We can talk about this in the morning. See you then. I was trying to prevent a phone call. Like all slightly introverted people, I preferred texts to calls because texts were finite. You exchanged a sentence or two and then signaled you were ready to be finished with the conversation by tapering down to the ol’ thumbs-up emoji, which I sent to my mother now.
I moved the painting of the woman to the same corner where I had put the poster. I took out my phone again and snapped a picture of the cats. Unable to resist contacting Erik, but not wanting to mention anything regarding our previous conversation, I wrote, The cats miss you.
A few minutes went by; I feared he wouldn’t respond, but finally my phone buzzed. I opened the text window to see a thumbs-up.
A thumbs-up.
I tossed the phone on the couch. “Fine,” I said. The cats looked at me, surprised by my tone. “I guess he needs to sort things out. I’ll give him all the time he needs.”
Moodily, I went to my computer and clicked it on, checking my messages on Facebook, reading some crazy political posts on Twitter, scrolling through Instagram. Then, on a sudden whim, I Googled “William Kodaly, artist.”
Pages full of hits came up, including some images of his face, both as I remembered it and then in much younger versions. I scanned a page of pictures in which he posed with other artists, or held an award, or stood beside a woman. Most of the photos seemed to be in the U.S., but there were a couple where he was clearly in Hungary, standing in front of the parliament building in Budapest and, in a second shot, laughing with a friend on a quaint dirt road where pecking chickens could be seen in the background. It looked like the road in my painting, actually. Sure enough, the caption said “Kodaly in Keszthely, Hungary.” I looked back at the painting where he had written “Keszthely” in the caption. The mood, the place, the feeling was the same. Had he lived there once? Or had he merely visited? Something in his face in the photograph told me that this place, at one point, had been home to him.
With a sigh, I pushed the computer away. I went into my living room and flipped on the television. I didn’t want to think; I wanted some mindless entertainment. I watched a silly romantic comedy on Netflix while my cats purred at my side. It was a nice experience, but when the warring couple finally came to terms and kissed each other at the end, I found myself missing Erik Wolf.
* * *
At the tea house the next day we prepared for a Friends of the Library event. The staff from the Riverwood Public Library was honoring their patrons, and the room buzzed with the good humor of people who loved books.
I finished setting my final table; we had used orange cloths and a lovely black tea service with a silver fleur-de-lis pattern reminiscent of a spider’s web. My grandmother had found it once at an estate auction; we didn’t have a full set, but since today’s group numbered only forty-five people, we found we had enough to make Halloween-inspired tables.
François had used his endless ingenuity to make cakes and sandwiches that reflected our theme. His little cakes were covered with cheerful spiders and grinning skulls, and the sandwiches were pierced with toothpicks that looked like bony fingers.
I trundled a cart to the back of the room, where I went through the kitchen doorway to find François at work, frosting the last of some cakes with eyeballs on top. I smoothed my Hungarian-patterned apron and moved to his side. “Can I help with anything?”
He shook his head. “Non. I am finished.”
“It looks amazing, as always.”
“Oui,” he agreed. François was not one to hide his light under a bushel.
I observed him with some affection; I saw him as a vain, handsome, French little brother. “How’s Claire? Everything okay in the love department?”
“Yes, yes.” He straightened up and stretched. “She is devoted to me. I have given her a boyfriend ring.”
“What’s that?”
He smirked. “Just something that says you are exclusive with me. But we are not engaged, not yet. She has earned a job downtown at a fine restaurant, and we will both be quite busy.”
“Oh, wow. Tell her I said congratulations.”
He nodded, then focused in on me. “How is your Wolf? He has upset you?”
Wow. I thought my mother and grandmother were the ones with insight, but François had picked that up quickly. “No, not exactly. He and I—had a disagreement.”
“Ah. And who must apologize?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t do anything wrong, but he’s hurt anyway. And I understand why. So we’re just kind of at an impasse.”
“Hmm.” He started putting little sandwiches on a tray. “How do you know you weren’t wrong?”
“Well—because I just told the truth. It’s a long story.”
François looked at me with his startling blue eyes. Sky blue, and deep. “Imagine hearing what you said, as him. Pretend you are he, and that someone else is Hana.”
“I’ll do that,” I said. “I’ll be back for those trays in a minute.” I walked swiftly out of the room and found myself face-to-face with my grandmother.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. Another pair of eyes studying me, this time hazel-brown ones.
“What? Nothing. Why is everyone interrogating me?”
François appeared behind me. “Clearly she has said something to Wolf that has upset him.”
My grandmother’s gaze flicked from me to him to me again. “What did you say?”
I sighed noisily. “Geez! I said I wished that I could see that light you saw around Grandpa. And that Mom saw around Dad. How am I supposed to know—you know—if he’s the one for me?”
She blinked. “Because of the way you feel.”
“I know that, obviously. I wish you and Mom had never told me your stories.”
“In any case, he is the one. You see nothing? No—what is it—aura?”
“No.” I pouted at her. “How am I supposed to know? How do you even see something like that?”
François was still there, eavesdropping. My grandmother said, “You have the trays ready?”
“Almost,” he said, and disappeared into the kitchen.
My grandmother led me to one of the tables, where my mother was going around with a bag of silver glitter and lightly sprinkling the orange cloths. The effect was sophisticated but also magical. Grandma sat me down and pointed at me. “You focus outward, expecting things. That’s not what to do.”
“What? How else should I see the world, if not by looking at it?”
My mother floated toward us, intrigued.
Grandma pointed at her. “Magda saw the light because she didn’t expect. Yes? She only saw a boy, and his beauty, and allowed the inner feeling to come out. Even my Magdalena, who keeps things inside, had a freedom moment.”
I glared. “No one knows what that means, Grandma.”
She nodded. “You are upset because you like this boy.”
I opened my mouth to complain, and my mother said, “Hana doesn’t like it when we call him a boy, Mama. He is probably thirty years old at least.”
“Fine, fine.” She leaned in and pointed at my eyes. “There is the outer eye. You see with this always. Now you must try the inner eye.”
“Maybe I don’t have one.”
“You do, Haniska. Everyone does. But for some people, that eye is always blind. Yours can see—but it is closed. Open your inner eye.”
I stared at her, then at my mother. “Sure, okay. And just how do I do that?”
My grandmother sniffed, dismissing this concern. “The same way you do these two.” She pointed at my eyes again. “You concentrate, you find your blindness, you open your eye.”
I stood up. “This has been super helpful, but I need to get going on the buffet table. Those skulls aren’t going to decorate themselves.”
My
mother put a gentle hand on my arm. “Give it time, Hana. And do some meditating.”
“Right.” I wasn’t angry, exactly, but I had experienced just about enough of my family’s supposed psychic gifts. I didn’t want them or need them. “By the way,” I said, “some guy approached me yesterday when I was out with Falken. He works at the Riverwood Chamber of Commerce. He said he knew you both and that he loved our family. He said if we ever needed anything, to call him.”
“What’s his name?” my mother asked.
“Sipos. Henrik Sipos.”
She and my grandmother exchanged a glance. “Never heard of him,” Grandma said, shaking her head.
“Me, neither,” my mother said. “Must have mistaken us for someone else. There are other Horvaths in town. Maybe other Kellers.”
I shook my head. “No, he knew you both. He was very pleased to make the connection.”
Grandma shrugged. “He has probably read about the tea house in the paper.”
My mother agreed and moved off with her glitter bag. Grandma marched off to the little stage to set up the microphone.
I walked to the side table where I would adorn grinning skulls with lovely black leaves and silver-orange fringe.
Hungarians didn’t celebrate Halloween; they focused far more on All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day, but my mother and her mother had taken to the American Halloween tradition with surprising enthusiasm. Our dark and ghoulish holiday was festive and exciting for them, and they loved the decor of the season.
I had set up my iPad on the table and selected a Halloween playlist from Spotify. “Monster Mash” came on, and once the laboratory sounds ended and the beat began, out of the corner of my eye I saw my grandmother dancing. She loved to dance, and everything was music to her. I had once seen her dancing to the thwick-thwack of windshield wipers in her car, bobbing in place with the joy of rhythm. Now she half strutted around the microphone stand and I smiled, despite my bad mood.
* * *
The library bash was in full swing, and we three tea house ladies scuttled back and forth with carafes of hot tea, replenishments of sandwich trays, and cloths for wiping the occasional spills. The group was in high spirits, buoyed partly by our Halloween soundtrack and then by the awards that were presented from the dais (at which point we turned down the music). At one point I stole outside to take a deep breath of autumn air; the icy cold had gone and we had been treated to a sunny day with temperatures in the sixties. I gazed at the view across the road—the lovely wheat-colored grasses, swaying gently in the fall breeze. The porch of the house across the way was dotted with bright orange pumpkins, and I thought I spied a cornstalk and bale of hay, as well.
I had wanted to take my Wolf away somewhere on one of his free days, off to some country inn or happy pumpkin patch so that we could enjoy autumn together before it was gone. Now I wasn’t sure when I’d see him again. Had I been wrong to tell him about the light? Was it a crazy thing to wonder about? I had told him the truth—I felt strongly about him one way or another.
I thought of what François had said, and I looked at it from Erik’s point of view. What if he had come to me and said he wished he could see a light around me, the way other men in his family had done? Would that offend me? Would I feel slighted? Rejected?
“Oh shoot,” I said. With a burst of remorse I realized what I had done, and that I was in fact the one who needed to apologize. I would go after the event was over and we had finished cleaning up.
I turned and went back into the building; Cassandra Stone was just emerging from the ladies’ room. She had been a librarian in Riverwood for about four years; before that she’d been somewhere in Chicago. “Hi, Cassandra,” I said.
She had swept her long reddish-brown hair up into a twist, but two artful strands hung over her ears. She tucked one of these behind her left ear as she walked toward me. “Hey, Hana. I haven’t seen you at the library for a while.”
“Yeah, things got pretty busy the last couple of months. I’ll be back soon.”
“Great.”
We started walking back toward the main hall, but I put a hand on her arm. “Cassandra, I just wanted to say I’m sorry. About William Kodaly.”
Her eyes widened. “You know about him?”
“I was one of the last people to see him. I just happened to be at his garage sale.”
“Ah.” Her eyes were sad. “Will was such a good guy. So talented, and so romantic. In many ways he was the perfect boyfriend.”
“When did you break up?”
She shrugged. “About two years ago. We stayed friends. I’m happy about that. He would sometimes be a resource for the library when we needed an artist’s advice, or he would agree to be on panels we had during Arts Festival Week.”
“He sounds great,” I said.
She wiped moisture out of one eye. “He was a restless soul. Ultimately, I wanted stability, but it didn’t stop me from missing him sometimes, you know?”
I did know, and I was missing Erik Wolf right now. “Are you—seeing anyone these days?”
She sighed. “Yeah. And it’s going well. But this news about Will has a lot of memories flowing back. It’s just hard to believe. I talked to him last week.”
“There’s something you should know. I bought a painting from him, of a woman in front of a field of flowers. I think the woman is you.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh? We did go out to Michigan once on a spring vacation, and I posed for a picture on the side of the road, by a fence.”
“That’s the scene in the painting.”
“Really? Will painted me. Well, it’s not entirely surprising. He was a genius, and he worked so rapidly. He was always looking for new subjects, and sometimes he did go to his photographs.”
“If you’d like it—” I said.
She smiled at me. “You’re sweet, Hana. But that’s a valuable painting. You keep it. I’d love to at least look at it sometime, though, if I could.”
“Of course. We can set up a time, or I can bring it to the library.”
“Thank you. That’s very kind.”
We moved back into the banquet area. I noticed that she moved very gracefully, like a dancer. She waved to someone at her table. I said, “Before you go, do you happen to know of anyone who might have given Will Kodaly a little wolf figurine? Made of Hungarian porcelain, so maybe a Hungarian connection of his?”
She gave me a quizzical look, but then considered my question. “Will wasn’t much of a collector. He made art, but he didn’t accumulate the art of others. He didn’t really have the time, I guess. But a little figurine? No, that doesn’t sound like him at all.”
“And when you talked to him last, did he say anything about a conflict? Someone who was an enemy?”
She folded her arms so that she was hugging herself, as though she needed comfort. “Will had flaws, like anyone, but people didn’t tend to dislike him. He was a likable person.”
“Huh.”
“I mean, I guess the one area where he had some bad feeling was in the romance department. I suppose there might be women who hold grudges, although none that I know. But the men—sometimes they were a problem. Ex-boyfriends, or maybe current boyfriends, if the women were playing the field. At one point there was word he had an affair with a married woman. In any case, I think guys felt really threatened by Will. It doesn’t seem like a motive for murder though, does it?”
I shrugged. “Well, thanks for talking to me, Cassandra.”
She moved away, and my mother appeared at my side. “François says there are only two more trays of petit fours. So we might have to bring them out on smaller plates. This group has energy, and somehow that seems to make them eat more.”
“Got it,” I said. I went to the back to help François transfer cakes onto tinier trays; this way I could still make several trips to tables and spread them o
ver the remaining half hour of the event.
“How does Claire like her new job?” I asked.
He shrugged. “She is pleased to have been chosen. But the hours are hard, and we miss each other.”
“I get that.”
He pursed his lips at me. “Are you going to apologize, to your Wolf?”
I wiped my hands on a napkin and studied him. “Is it a French thing, that look of disapproval? Because you’re really good at it.”
“Oui, I think.” Now he looked smug.
I picked up one of the small trays. “And, yes, I’m going to apologize. Right after I leave this place. But he’ll be busy at work, so I’m going to leave a note at his house. That’s more personal than a text.”
“Just wait there for him, apologize in person,” he said.
I shrugged. “I’m feeling kind of cowardly. I think I’ll start with a note. Maybe leave him some paprikás. The way to a man’s heart is through his tummy, right?”
François thought about this. “Yes and no. But better than nothing, Hana.”
I sent him my own disapproving look and marched out with the food.
Chapter 4
Ulveflokk
Before I went to Erik’s place, I stopped at my house and fed my cats. Then I went to my room for an old book of Hungarian fairy stories; it was a volume Erik had seen before, while investigating a different murder. I looked up a story called “The Servant Girl and the Wolf,” and turned to a spot three pages into the tale. On this page was a picture of a young woman in a plain dress standing in the forest and looking up at an enormous gray wolf who seemed about to devour her. The text said,
The servant girl knew she could not return home to her cruel master, and she sobbed out her fears to the wolf, who took pity on her and said that he would be her protector.
“The woods are full of devils,” the wolf said. “But even the devils fear me. At my side you will be safer than anywhere else. In return I ask only for your devotion.”
Death of a Wandering Wolf Page 5