by Ann Yost
“A couple of academics identified a Finnish connection with Munich and have postulated that Nazi loot may have made its way to Finland or even the Upper Midwest,” Harry said. “Chances are slim that it’s here.”
“But you came up to find out.”
It wasn’t a question and Harry Dent grinned at me.
“Smart guy, your husband.”
“You told me you joined the TV company because Serena asked you to. You said you did it as a favor to her.”
Harry’s grin widened.
“I didn’t lie. She wanted to come.”
My eyes narrowed on him.
“Look, Cupcake, it’s a sixty-million dollar masterpiece. I’d have been a fool not to look for it.”
I felt a chill run down my spine.
“The search for this painting precipitated Cricket Koski’s death.”
“That’s possible. Probable, even.”
“Are you saying that Cricket was just collateral damage?”
“In a sense.” He repeated himself, this time with more emphasis. “It is a priceless, irreplaceable piece of art and begs the age-old question, is it right for someone to die for culture? What else was World War II about?”
Jace was staring at him. After a moment, he said, “where is the Hautamaki letter?”
“The old lady has it,” Harry said. “The one who’s afraid of ghosts.”
The mention of Mrs. Paikkonen acted on me like a shot of adrenalin.
“Geez Louise! I forgot. You were supposed to pick her up this afternoon, Harry. What happened?”
He shrugged. “Nothing at all. I stopped at the B and B, Elli told me to come over here and get her and when I knocked on her door she didn’t answer it.”
“She wasn’t there?”
“No. I misspoke. She wouldn’t open the door. She spoke through it. Told me she was exhausted because of her sleepless night, that she’d taken a sleeping pill and just wanted to be left alone. I said okay.”
I frowned and Jace searched my face.
“What’s the matter, Umlaut?”
“It’s not like Mrs. Pike to take a pill. Folks in her generation believe that everything can be cured by sauna or Vicks VapoRub. And she was nervous. Why would she want to stay here alone all afternoon?”
Neither of the men had an answer to that. I hurried up the back staircase to the second floor and my room. The door was closed and there was a neatly printed note taped on the outside.
PLEASE DO NOT DISTURB
I pictured the old lady’s reaction if I forced my way into her bedroom and found I didn’t quite have the sisu to do that. I obeyed the sign.
Chapter 22
Serena, covered in snow from the thirty-foot walk from the B and B, arrived half an hour later, bringing Larry, my parka and the message that Arvo had helped her and the cameramen close up Bait and Stitch.
“The folks around here are nice,” she said, yawning. “For the most part. What’s the story with that Ronja woman? After you left she came back with a different kid. That one didn’t knit, either.”
“Ronja’s got five daughters,” I explained. “She’s hoping at least one of them will be spotted by a talent scout and offered a Hollywood contract.”
“Why would she want that for her girls?”
“Delusions of grandeur. In the end they’ll probably all marry boys from Copper County High and she’ll be perfectly content.”
“It’s tough for them that they have to marry or leave the area. I can see there aren’t many jobs here.”
Serena’s thoughtful comments pleased me. The lack of employment opportunity was a very real problem for families that wanted to stay together.
“We’re trying to promote tourism,” I explained, “but there are problems with that. It’s beautiful country with an intriguing back story but we’re too far away from the population centers. Convincing you guys to come up here to videotape your pilot was one of many, endless attempts by Arvo to increase our profile. I’m sorry it’s not really working out for you.” Or us, I wanted to add.
“Why do you stay in Red Jacket, Hatti?” Serena’s hazel eyes were focused on my face. “Surely you could go somewhere else, get a job, get married, whatever.”
I wanted to grin at her and tell her it was complicated but I couldn’t speak freely, not with Jace and Harry in the same room. I settled for a version of the truth.
“It’s home.”
Serena nodded and yawned. It was one of those huge, uncontrollable yawns that involves the stretching of arms and making of faces.
“I think I’ll go up to bed,” she said. “I’m exhausted.”
“You should go up, too, Hatti,” Jace said, surprising me. “Maybe Harry and I can grab some guy time, play a little euchre.”
Harry’s light brows lifted but he didn’t disagree. I got up from my chair and remembered I was supposed to sleep tonight at the funeral home. Unfortunately, I couldn’t grab my nightshirt and toothbrush without disturbing Mrs. Pike. And then I remembered that Arvo was back in town. I could stay home. Up on the third floor.
“I’ll be on the sofa in Pops’ study,” Jace said. “Feel free to join me if your agoraphobia kicks in.”
“Or you can join me if you’d prefer not to use the chamber pot,” Harry said, with a wink.
I made a face at each of them.
“I’ll be fine in the attic.”
A short time later I crawled under the heavy quilt and listened to the snow hitting the window over my head. It was cozy under the slanting eaves and I should have been, in my late mummi’s words, as snug as a bug in a rug. And I was. I was also hyper aware of the fact that my husband was under the same roof for the first time in more than a year and that we had plenty of unfinished business between us. And three floors.
I tried deep breathing. I tried shallow breathing. I tried breathing in with my left nostril and breathing out with my right. Or was it vice versa? One way was supposed to be relaxing and sleep inducing, the other, energizing. Since I couldn’t remember which was which, I tried to think about Lars and Sofi. But that just led to anxiety. I thought about Seth. More anxiety. Inevitably, I thought about Jace. Maximum anxiety.
He hadn’t called me on New Year’s Eve but he was here now. He hadn’t made any promises but he’d kissed me as if he’d meant it. What did he want from me? What did I want from him? What about Max? Where was Max? For that matter, where was Sonya, my midwife friend? Then I remembered she’d gone to New Mexico to visit her family. Had that been only two days ago? It felt like a year since we were melting ingots and casting them into a bucket of cold water to tell our fortunes.
Sofi’s had looked like a baby carriage. I couldn’t remember mine. I was getting drowsy.
When I opened my eyes it was to see light filtering in through the attic window. Light, of course, is a relative term. On a January morning in Red Jacket, the sun rises behind snow clouds and the light is a soft gray, at best. I’d slept in a tee shirt and underwear and, as I stepped out of bed onto the ice-cold wooden floor, I shivered as I pulled on my jeans and sweatshirt.
The good news was that the agitation and uncertainty of the night before had disappeared. I felt ready to make decisions about my life, to be in charge of my own destiny.
The bad news was heralded by the series of sharp, hysterical shrieks that pierced the door to the stairwell. I flung myself down the stairs and onto the landing. Serena Waterfall, wore a woolly, purple robe that made her look like a grape. Her red hair flared out in all directions, like the crown on Lady Liberty. Her face was so white she appeared to have drowned and her voice just kept blasting out screams that were so loud they made my ears throb.
“Geez Louise, Serena! Quiet down! You’ll wake Mrs. Pike!”
She must have heard me because the screaming stopped and she said in a trembling voice, “Nothing will wake Mrs. Pike. Not ever.” I followed the finger she pointed toward the window-seat at the end of the corridor.
Eudora Paikkonen, dressed i
n the familiar black wool dress that reached from just below her pointed chin to her wrists and then to her ankles, was propped against the window like a life-sized marionette. She was very still and she was seated at just the right angle for me to see that there was something protruding from her torso, just under her left breast. It was short, narrow and made of bamboo.
A double-pointed needle.
I froze, too shocked to even scream. What was she doing here? What had happened? Why were her spectacles riding low on her nose? Why were her eyes open? I knew, on some level, it was because she was dead, that someone had killed her with the double-pointed needle, but it didn’t make sense. Why had she been killed? When? And, as always, my thoughts came around to myself. Was this my fault? Was Mrs. Pike dead because I’d failed to find her yesterday or to check on her last night?
Had she been stabbed, like Cricket Koski, because she knew something that represented a danger to someone?
It came to me with a crystal-clear clarity. Of course she knew something.
She knew the contents of Ernst Hautamaki’s letter to his Aunt Bengta. She knew that there was a priceless piece of Nazi loot on the Keweenaw and what’s more, she knew where it was. And, now she knew who had murdered Cricket.
Or, rather, she had known.
Hell’s bells.
My mind was a whirling dervish of guilt and grief and that curious clarity. I was aware of Harry Dent, wearing only a pair of jeans and a tee shirt taking his ex-wife into his arms but it was background noise. Even when Jace slipped his arm around me, I couldn’t really feel it. All I could think about was Mrs. Pike, how she’d learned something important and how that knowledge had led to her death. Someone had valued her life less than a work of art.
“Another knitting needle murder,” Harry murmured, looking at me over Serena’s head. “It must be the same killer or a copycat.”
“Why Mrs. Paikkonen?” Jace asked. “Was this about the letter from Munich?”
Serena let out a howl. When she’d finished I spoke in a low voice.
“It had to be the letter. She’d translated it but she hadn’t told anyone what was in there. That’s why she wanted to get ahold of me yesterday. This is all my fault.”
Jace didn’t waste time trying to comfort me. Not with words.
“There couldn’t have been anything in the letter to threaten anyone after three-quarters of a century. It must have been confirmation that the painting exists, that it is hidden somewhere on the Keweenaw.”
“And,” Harry agreed, “it may have revealed the painting’s whereabouts.”
Tears pricked the backs of my eyes. I was a bit surprised to feel a wash of grief. I hadn’t liked Mrs. Paikkonen very much. No one liked her, except possibly Mrs. Sorensen. But she was a member of our community and she’d been dedicated to that community. And for her dedication, she’d been trussed up on a knitting needle.
I heard Jace’s voice and realized he was talking to me.
“Get dressed and we’ll call the sheriff. And don’t forget your socks.”
He’d remembered about my perennially cold feet. I smiled at him, showed him my phone, and headed back to the attic to dress and to call the emergency number.
Waino answered the phone at the sheriff’s department and I remembered that the receptionist, Bertha Lamko, was still with her grandkids downstate.
“Hei, Hatti. You wanna talk to Lars Teljo? Because you can’t.”
“No, no. I’m calling to report a murder.”
“No need. I already know about it.”
I felt a jolt as if someone had thumped me between the shoulder blades.
“Another anonymous tip?”
“Yah. On the telephone.”
Another indication, if one was needed, that these deaths were linked.
“When will you be over?”
“Over where?”
I was used to glacial reaction time from Waino but even so he was trying my patience.
“To my house. On Calumet Street. To take a look at the crime scene and examine the body. And remove it,” I added, in case that didn’t immediately occur to him.
“No need, Hatti. Body’s here in the morgue.”
I covered my face with my right hand. Branding Waino as slow was like me calling the kettle black.
“There’s been another murder,” I said. “A second one. Somebody stabbed Mrs. Paikkonen with a knitting needle.”
“Holy wah! I’ll pick up the chief down at the diner. Hatti, if you want to get rid of the body you have to call Arvo Maki for his hearse. Sheriff drove the Corvette today.”
Clump was just lucky that he had Arvo to fall back on. The hearse, big and heavy with its snow tires and chains, was often used for municipal tasks which allowed the sheriff to stay within his budget.
The sheriff clearly wasn’t thinking about the sports car or the hearse or the budget when, half an hour later, he huffed and puffed his way up the main staircase at the Queen Anne. He glared at the corpse and then at the rest of us.
“H-e-triple hockey sticks,” he gasped, after he’d caught his breath. “What in tarnation is goin’ on in this town?” His narrowed eyes turned to me. “This is your fault.”
“Hold on, sheriff,” Jace said. “You can’t say that to her.”
“Oh, I dunno,” Clump replied. “The Koski girl was killed at her brother-in-law’s. This one in her own house. The weapon’s a damn knittin’ needle and who in town sells knittin’ needles?” He pointed a fat finger at me. “She does.”
By now Elli had arrived. She suggested that Waino examine the crime scene and interview the witnesses while Clump accompanied her next door to help himself to Scotch eggs and coffee. She didn’t have to twist his arm.
Jace, Harry, Serena and I told Waino everything we knew about the previous night and that morning. Waino spent most of the time trying to figure out where we had slept.
We gathered at the wicker table in the kitchen while Waino consulted his notes.
He asked me, for the third time, why I’d slept in the attic.
“Because Mrs. Paikkonen was using my room.”
“Don’t she have a house just down the street?”
I sighed, inwardly, and explained, again, that Mrs. Pike had spent the previous night at the funeral home as hostess for the Tallmasters who were staying there.
“Yesterday she told me she did not want to spend another night there so I offered to swap with her and I gave her my room.”
“Why did she refuse to stay at Maki’s?”
So far I had avoided getting into the business with the ghost and the karsikko sign. It really had nothing to do with the murder and I knew it would confuse Waino.
When I hesitated, Serena solved the problem for me.
“Mrs. Paikkonen thought she heard footsteps in the attic last night. It frightened her.”
Waino turned his baby blues on me.
“So why didn’t you sleep at Maki’s?”
“Because Arvo arrived home yesterday. There was no need for me to go over there. And since Mr. Dent and Ms. Waterfall were occupying my folks’ bedroom and the guestroom and Mrs. Pike was in my room, I decided to catch some z’s in the attic.”
“Where’d Night Wind sleep?”
“Downstairs in the study,” Jace repeated. “Like I told you.”
“Thing is,” Waino said, “that’s kinda weird, you know? Seein’ as you guys are married.”
It wasn’t a stupid question but it wasn’t relevant. I didn’t answer it and neither did anyone else. Then he asked to see each of the bedrooms before he reported to the sheriff.
I led the way and we climbed the narrow, uncarpeted stairs to the attic. At the top I pulled the string of the overhead lightbulb and the spill of light illuminated something that caught my eye. It was a karsikko sign.
A new one.
I glanced at it, briefly, then directed Waino over to the area by the bed. I didn’t want to have to explain about the sign. Not, anyway, until I’d had a ch
ance to think about it. Not that I had to think about who had put it there. It was a message from beyond the grave but not left by a ghost.
This sign, I was certain, had been left by our latest murder victim. It was not directions to Tuonela. Mrs. Pike had been trying to tell me something.
Emotion swept through me as I imagined her hurrying up to the attic, out of breath, out of time, knowing that death stalked her. She’d known too much. That letter, the one from Ernst Hautamaki had revealed something, most likely where the painting was hidden. Mrs. Paikkonen, forbidding, unlikeable and remote, had used the last minutes of her life to leave me a coded message. What was it? The location of the Nazi loot or the identity of the killer?
I realized Waino was staring at me. I’d been quiet for too long. I forced myself back to the present and groped for something to say.
“At least this time you can’t suspect Lars,” I said.
Waino shrugged his massive shoulders. It was like watching a mountain move up and down.
“Depends on what time she was killed.”
“Hold on, hold on. Lars was locked up. He’s been locked up since early Sunday morning.” Then I remembered the sheriff’s honor system. “He was and is incarcerated.”
Waino shook his head.
“Not since ten-thirty last night. I went out to the beer depot and when I got back he’d made a break for it. Damn shame, too. I’d been winning at poker.”
Chapter 23
Jace and Arvo took the remains of Mrs. Paikkonen to the morgue in Frog Creek while the rest of us joined Sheriff Clump and half the population of the town at the B and B.
I sat in a kind of stupor as the lawmen questioned everyone gathered there. Well, Waino took statements while the sheriff stuffed his face with Elli’s freshly baked almond cake. Gradually I began to realize that the deputy was doing a good job. He asked a few questions then let people talk. He didn’t interrupt Mrs. Moilanen as she relayed, in intricate detail, what she’d done the previous evening, from whipping up a new batch of vinegar cabbage to watching Jeopardy! Then reading three chapters in Leviticus before going to bed.