Heritage of Darkness (37 page)

on her heels. Energy pulsed in the stale air, but she still couldn’t define the emotion behind it. That alone was disconcerting. What

on earth had happened up here?

They could stand straight only in the center of the room

because the eaves sloped down sharply. In the weak light cast by an overhead bulb, Moyer surveyed cardboard cartons, dusty chairs, a

couple of suitcases, straw-filled milk crates with bits of china peeking through. “Not much here,” he observed.

Chloe turned around, drawn toward the back gable wall.

Something here throbbed with a tangible energy. She pulled a dan-

gling string and another bare bulb flickered on.

“Dear God,” Chloe whispered. She understood, now. Every-

thing.

Roelke and Moyer were on her heels. She pointed to the wall.

“What?” Roelke demanded. “It’s just some of Emil’s carved

stuff.”

“It’s not just stuff.” Chloe stared at the carved pieces hung in a precise row. “Those are mangles.”

Moyer leaned closer. “They’re … what?”

Chloe gritted her teeth and stepped closer. Each mangle was

unique, each a miracle of craftsmanship. Two initials and a date

had been carved at the base of every one. Chloe pointed at the

first. “‘P. L., 1982.’ Petra Lekstrom.”

The men exchanged another silent look.

“I don’t quite get this one.” Chloe pointed to a mangle carved

with ‘S. J.’ and two dates, 1943 and 1977. “Sigrid, maybe?” she

mused. “Before she married and after her husband died?”

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Roelke pressed one knuckle against his forehead. “Jesus Holy

Christ.”

“‘L. C., 1966.’ Lavinia Carmichael? Maybe after she was wid-

owed?” Chloe looked on down the row. “This one, ‘A. G., 1952,’

might be Adelle before she married Tom.” She didn’t recognize the

next set of initials but she paused before ‘P. E., 1950’ and pointed.

“Same thing here. This could be Phyllis, Howard’s wife. I don’t

know her birth name.”

When Chloe looked at the final mangle it took a moment to

find her voice. “‘M. K., 1946.’ Marit Kallerud. Mom didn’t change

her name when she married my dad.”

Chief Moyer was clearly bewildered. “You’re going to have to

help me out here, Miss Ellefson.”

Roelke touched her arm. “I’m trying to remember exactly what

your mother said.”

Chloe had no trouble reciting from memory. “Men tradition-

ally carved personalized mangles for the women they hoped to

marry. A suitor would leave the mangle on the woman’s doorstep,

and if she took it inside, it meant she accepted his proposal. A few men tried to hedge their bets by carving more than one mangle,

because once a woman had declined a proposal gift, it couldn’t be

offered to anyone else.”

“I still don’t get it.” Moyer rubbed his chin, staring at the carvings.

“Old Norwegians have a saying,” Chloe told him. “Beware the

man with many mangles.”

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thirty-three

At eight A.M. the next morning Chloe drove Mom home from

the hospital. “Thank you Chloe,” Mom said, adjusting her wrap-

around sunglasses. “For this, and for last night.”

Chloe tried to find words to describe the terror she’d felt when

she’d found Mom in the trunk at the Valdres House. Since she

couldn’t, she finally settled for, “You’re welcome.”

The sky had cleared. Sunlight glittered on every ice crystal.

Chloe parked in front of Sigrid’s house and insisted that Mom take her arm as they made their way up the steps.

They found Sigrid sitting alone in the tower room, surrounded

by scrapbooks, dolls, the charming parade of wooden animals

marching toward the Ark. “Oh, Marit,” she cried. “Sit down. Are

you sure you’re all right?”

“I’m
fine
,” Mom said with a touch of her usual asperity.

Sigrid had been holding the
nisse
-embroidered baby bib, but she set it aside and led the way into the parlor. “I brewed some coffee—”

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“None for me,” Chloe replied. She hung up Mom’s coat before

sinking into a chair. “I may take a nap. I’m exhausted.”

“I am too,” Sigrid admitted. “But I couldn’t sleep. Has anyone

been able to make sense of what Emil has done?”

“Some of it.” Chloe glanced at her mother. “Mom? Are you up

for this conversation, or do you want to go to bed?”

Mom crossed her arms. “I want to hear what you have to say.”

“OK, then.” Chloe tried to assemble and condense everything

she’d learned overnight. “Evidently Emil wanted a good Norwe-

gian wife. And evidently her ethnic heritage mattered more than

anything else. Mom? Did Emil propose to you in 1946?”

“He … well, yes, he did.” Mom studied her hands. “He even

made a mangle for me. It was quite awkward. I declined as gently

as I could, and I thought he’d put it aside. We got to be friends

after that. At least I thought we were friends.”

“Emil Bergsbakken made a lot of mangles, and hung on to a lot

of grudges,” Chloe continued. “I found a calendar stick he’d made

to keep track of the women who’d turned him down. The police

are sorting everything out, but it seems he updated the stick each time he tried to harm someone. I saw a letter M beside a symbol

that resembles a ladder. Does that mean anything to you?”

“A ladder?” Mom looked baffled. “No, I can’t imagine

what … oh.” Her expression changed. “Might that symbol have

been railroad tracks?”

“Well … maybe. What would that mean?”

“A long time ago,” Mom said, “I almost fell from the platform

right in front of an oncoming train. It happened here at the Deco-

rah station.”

Sigrid moaned softly.

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“In fact,” Marit continued faintly, “that’s how I met your father, Chloe. He caught me.”

Chloe clenched her chair’s armrests as she thought about how

the cosmos would have changed had Mom died before meeting

Dad. It took her a moment to find her voice again. “He may have

tried to harm you several times before. Maybe little accidents that happened while you visited over the years weren’t really accidents.

He didn’t shut you in the vault—evidently that really was a

prank—but Emil set the fire in your classroom.”

Mom shook her head, winced, went still.

Chloe was glad that Chief Moyer had asked her and Roelke not

to speak of Adelle, Lavinia, or Phyllis. Emil had admitted to blocking the vent from Adelle’s workshop and putting the wood chip in

Lavinia’s soda can. He’d also replaced some of Phyllis’s oil paints with older, more toxic formulations, and noted the attempt by

carving a sled to represent the piece that earned her a Gold Medal.

Lavinia was fine, and it would be hard to prove that Emil’s actions had caused the other women’s illnesses. “We know that Bergsbakken killed Petra Lekstrom,” the chief had said, “and we’ve got him for assault as well. He’ll be in prison for the rest of his life.”

“Emil confessed to killing Petra,” Chloe told the older women.

“He didn’t like her more than anyone else did, but after his brother died, he was lonely. He was also running out of single ‘Norwegian’

women to fantasize about. He decided that he and Petra would

make the perfect team—him carving woodenware and her paint-

ing it.”

“Heavens,” Mom murmured.

“When Petra arrived at Vesterheim last Sunday, Emil found her

in the Norwegian House and proposed on the spot. Unlike you,

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Mom, she didn’t try to let him down gently. He told the police that she laughed at him. Scorned him. Something inside him

just … just snapped, I guess. He grabbed the
lefse
pin and … well, you know the rest.”

Sigrid clasped her arms across her chest.

“Roelke and I tried and tried to see a pattern.” Chloe rested her

head back against the chair. “I was trying to figure out if Sixty-Sevens were being targeted, but Peggy Nelson and Linda Skatrud both

said they hadn’t experienced any bad luck or illness. In Emil’s

mind, though, neither of those women would have been a suitable

partner. Peggy is Filipina. Linda’s not Norwegian either—she

started rosemaling to learn more about her husband’s heritage.

Emil wanted a woman of pure Norwegian descent. That included

Lavinia. Her family had Norwegian roots, even though she mar-

ried a man who wasn’t Scandinavian.”

“I just can’t believe this of Emil,” Mom whispered.

Chloe didn’t add that Emil had evidently proposed to a couple

of other women as well, Norwegian ladies who weren’t Sixty-Sev-

ens. The police were tracking them down with mangles in hand.

Mom’s voice trembled. “He’s been part of the Vesterheim fam-

ily all his life! How could he
do
something like this? How could he hide this part of himself?”

Sigrid straightened wearily. “I wonder if it doesn’t go back to

his mother’s death, when Emil was just a boy. He told me once

how it happened.”

“A runaway horse, wasn’t it?” Mom asked. “His mother was in

the farm wagon?”

“Yes,” Sigrid said. “But his father had asked Emil to hold the

lines. He got distracted by a dragonfly and wandered away. The

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horses bolted, and his mother was thrown against a tree. She died

instantly.” Sigrid reached for a tissue, which she crumpled in her hands. “It’s hard to imagine what something like that would do to

a boy. Perhaps he’s been looking for a ‘good Norwegian woman’

ever since.”

Chloe said, “And with every rejection, his growing hurt and

rage got harder to hide.”

“Oscar was a good influence on him,” Sigrid said. “He was gen-

erally cheerful. Without even knowing it, Oscar may have helped

Emil suppress his dark urges.”

“And maybe …” Chloe hesitated, then plunged out with it.

“There were a lot more carvings on the Winter side of the calendar stick than the Summer side. I think the season contributed to

Emil’s mental illness. The short days, the darkness … even the
julebukking
tradition. Edwina Ree told me that
julebukking
gave people an opportunity to act in ways that were normally forbidden—”

“Not like this!” Sigrid cried sharply.

Chloe reached out to squeeze the older woman’s hand. “Of

course not. And for whatever it’s worth, I think Emil really struggled against the dark impulses. Part of him was horrified by what

he did, and wanted to be stopped. I think he left that calendar stick in the collections storage area in hopes that someone would find it and figure things out. He advised Roelke to talk to Edwina Ree

about Petra’s murder because he thought that if anyone could see

into his soul, it would be Edwina. And believe it or not, he told the investigator that he left that
budstikke
here for you, Mom, not as a threat, but to warn you.” Chloe stood abruptly and walked to the

window. “On the other hand, after Roelke mentioned that he and I

were following some leads, Emil panicked and slammed one into

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his own door in an attempt to point attention elsewhere.” She

didn’t mention Emil’s attacks against her and Roelke. All the

details would emerge in time.

Mom lifted her hands, then let them drop helplessly back to

her lap. “I simply can’t grasp what has been going on in that man’s head.”

“He’s been at war with himself for decades,” Chloe said quietly.

She remembered Emil lying on the floor of the Valdres House

looking small and helpless.
I’ve been fighting for a long

time.
…
Someone needed to stop me
…
Sometimes the darkness is
inside.
But that reminded her of the pain in Roelke’s eyes. He’d been with her for most of what came after Emil’s arrest—the trip

to the farm, the trip to the police station—but he’d withdrawn

from her. And she had no idea what to do about that.

Maybe I can think of something after I get some sleep, she

thought. Recent events and a night spent dozing in an uncomfort-

able hospital chair had left her weary to the bone. Howard had

taken Roelke back to his place, but they’d agreed to meet up later.

Maybe by then she’d know how to help Roelke through this.

She longed to rise and trudge to her guestroom, right now. But

there was one thing she didn’t understand. “Sigrid,” she said, “we found a mangle in Emil’s house that was carved with the initials ‘S.

J.’ Was that you?”

Sigrid rubbed one thumb. “Yes. My maiden name was Jensen.

And Emil did ask me to marry him. Twice, actually. Before I mar-

ried Bill, and again after Bill died.”

Chloe waited, hoping Sigrid would continue on her own. Sec-

onds ticked past. Mom lifted her head and looked at her friend.

Sigrid didn’t meet her gaze.

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“I don’t recall seeing an S figure on Emil’s calendar stick,”

Chloe said finally. “So I have to ask. Why do you think Emil never tried to harm you?”

Sigrid abandoned thumb-rubbing and clutching her hands

together. “I can only imagine that it’s because … because Emil is

probably Violet’s father.”

Mom gasped. “What?”

Chloe remembered Sigrid’s sadness about Violet’s birthday, the

exquisite Noah’s Ark, the sorrow contained in the hand-stitched

baby bib. I thought the gloom came from my own mood, Chloe

thought. But Sigrid’s regrets lingered in the tower room.

“Emil proposed to me before I married Bill. Later, when things

with Bill became … strained … Emil and I had a very, very brief